Prosecution Insights
Prosecution Insights
Technology area: 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
Formulatrix Inc. manages 2 pending office actions within the Chemistry & Materials technology area. These actions are split between 2 distinct examiners and 2 distinct art units. This indicates that the company patent portfolio is currently touching multiple technical sub-sectors or examination groups.
HERON, VELVET ELIZABETH is the busiest examiner for the company, holding 1 pending office action. Because there are 2 distinct examiners each handling a portion of the 2 pending office actions, the company must navigate different examination perspectives. The distribution across 2 distinct art units suggests that the underlying technologies may have diverse chemical or material applications.
Practitioners must coordinate responses that are consistent across these different examination groups. The involvement of HERON, VELVET ELIZABETH as one of the 2 distinct examiners highlights the need for specialized attention to individual examiner tendencies even in a small portfolio. The presence of 2 pending office actions total indicates an active but manageable volume of ongoing patent prosecution.
Based on the USPTO statutory response window for each pending office action. 1 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 |
|---|---|
| Multi-statute (no §101) | 2 (100%) |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| HERON, VELVET ELIZABETH | 1 | 47.4% | +52.6% |
| LE, AUSTIN Q | 1 | 49.7% | +31.0% |
Multi-statute / §101-driven matters, or cases in front of an examiner with an allow rate under 30%. The top 2 ordered by deadline are shown.
| App # | Title | Examiner | Due in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18032463 | APPARATUSES WITH FLUIDIC CHANNEL GEOMETRIES FOR SAMPLE TO ANSWER PCR ANALYSIS AND METHODS OF USING SAME | HERON, VELVET ELIZABETH | 27d |
| 17426226 | LIQUID HANDLING INSTRUMENT AND PIPETTING HEAD FOR AND METHOD OF ASPIRATING AND/OR DISPENSING LIQUIDS | LE, AUSTIN Q | — |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18032463 | APPARATUSES WITH FLUIDIC CHANNEL GEOMETRIES FOR SAMPLE TO ANSWER PCR ANALYSIS AND METHODS OF USING SAME | HERON, VELVET ELIZABETH | 27d |
| 17426226 | LIQUID HANDLING INSTRUMENT AND PIPETTING HEAD FOR AND METHOD OF ASPIRATING AND/OR DISPENSING LIQUIDS | LE, AUSTIN Q | — |
| Art Unit | Apps |
|---|---|
| 1798 | 1 |
| 1796 | 1 |
| App # | Title | Examiner | Art Unit | Statutes | Status | Due in | AI | Filed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18032463 | APPARATUSES WITH FLUIDIC CHANNEL GEOMETRIES FOR SAMPLE TO ANSWER PCR ANALYSIS AND METHODS OF USING SAME | HERON, VELVET ELIZABETH | 1798 | §102§103 | Final Rejection | 27d | Pending | Apr 18, 2023 |
| 17426226 | LIQUID HANDLING INSTRUMENT AND PIPETTING HEAD FOR AND METHOD OF ASPIRATING AND/OR DISPENSING LIQUIDS | LE, AUSTIN Q | 1796 | §103§112 | Non-Final OA | — | Pending | Jul 28, 2021 |
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