Technology areas: Biotechnology & Pharmaceuticals • Chemistry & Materials
2 pending office actions • 2 art units • 2 examiners • 0 of 2 (0%) have an AI response strategy ready • 2 patents granted in the last 365 days
Fermentalg manages a patent portfolio in the Biotechnology & Pharmaceuticals technology area. The company currently has 2 pending office actions. This level of activity suggests a moderate engagement with the patent office, requiring the management of multiple legal responses simultaneously. The current state of the portfolio indicates an active phase of securing rights for different biological innovations.
The prosecution is distributed across 2 distinct examiners and the distinct art units. This spread indicates that the company's intellectual property spans different technical sub-sectors within the Biotechnology & Pharmaceuticals field. ERICA NICOLE JONES-FOSTER is the busiest examiner, currently handling 1 busiest examiner pending office action. This means the workload is divided, as the busiest examiner is responsible for a portion of the pending office actions.
For practitioners, the involvement of the distinct art units implies a need for technical arguments tailored to different examination groups. With 1 busiest examiner pending action assigned to ERICA NICOLE JONES-FOSTER, the remaining action is handled by a different professional. This diversification ensures that the company's progress in Biotechnology & Pharmaceuticals is not dependent on a single examiner's perspective, though it requires coordinating multiple response strategies.
Based on the USPTO statutory response window for each pending office action. 2 of the docket's apps have a known mailing date; the rest are excluded from the tile counts.
Difficulty is derived from the rejection statutes on the most recent pending office action. §101-driven and multi-statute cases are graded Hard; §112-only and obviousness-type double-patenting cases are graded Easy; everything else is Medium. "Unknown" means we have not yet parsed a statute for that office action.
| Bucket | Cases |
|---|---|
| §103 only | 1 (50%) |
| No statute on record | 1 (50%) |
How the docket's pending cases split across USPTO tech-center bands.
Manual office-action response work runs about 10 hours per case. The time-saved bands below show what IP Author's prosecution pipeline typically delivers — a conservative 20% on the low end, 35% in the middle, 50% on the high end.
| Examiner | Apps on this docket | Allow rate | Interview lift |
|---|---|---|---|
| FRITCHMAN, REBECCA M | 1 | 45.6% | +35.4% |
| JONES-FOSTER, ERICA NICOLE | 1 | 49.4% | +44.0% |
Cases in front of an examiner whose interview lift is 10 percentage points or more — i.e. interviewed cases historically resolve more favorably than non-interviewed ones. The top 2 ordered by deadline are shown.
| App # | Title | Examiner | Due in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17420798 | PROCESS FOR PURIFYING PHYCOCYANINS | JONES-FOSTER, ERICA NICOLE | 21d |
| 17420801 | PROCESS FOR EXTRACTING PHYCOCYANINS | FRITCHMAN, REBECCA M | 82d |
| Art Unit | Apps |
|---|---|
| 1758 | 1 |
| 1656 | 1 |
| App # | Title | Examiner | Art Unit | Statutes | Status | Due in | AI | Filed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17420801 | PROCESS FOR EXTRACTING PHYCOCYANINS | FRITCHMAN, REBECCA M | 1758 | §103 | Non-Final OA | 82d | Pending | Jul 06, 2021 |
| 17420798 | PROCESS FOR PURIFYING PHYCOCYANINS | JONES-FOSTER, ERICA NICOLE | 1656 | — | Non-Final OA | 21d | Pending | Jul 06, 2021 |
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Start Free TrialFermentalg has 2 pending office actions as of October 2026, spread across 2 art units and 2 examiners.
Rebecca M Fritchman has the most, with 1 of Fermentalg's pending office actions.
Mostly Chemistry & Materials (USPTO Tech Center 1700), based on where its pending office actions are examined.
