Prosecution Insights
Prosecution Insights
Technology area: Medical Devices & Mechanical Engineering
2 pending office actions • 2 art units • 2 examiners • 0 of 2 (0%) have an AI response strategy ready • 17 patents granted in the last 365 days
Kobayashi Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. operates a company patent portfolio in the Medical Devices & Mechanical Engineering technology area. The portfolio currently has 2 pending office actions. These actions are distributed across 2 distinct examiners and 2 distinct art units. The busiest examiner for the company is FLANAGAN, BEVERLY MEINDL, who is responsible for 1 pending office action. This means that each of the 2 distinct examiners is handling a portion of the pending workload.
The distribution across 2 distinct art units indicates that the company's medical device innovations are being reviewed by multiple technical groups. Because there are 2 pending office actions and 2 distinct examiners, the prosecution outcomes are subject to the interpretations of different reviewers. For a practitioner, this spread suggests that the company's current patenting efforts are not centralized under a single individual. The presence of FLANAGAN, BEVERLY MEINDL as the busiest examiner with 1 pending office action shows how the current legal matters are divided. This data reflects the current state of the company's interactions with the patent office across different technical sectors and art units.
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%) |
| Multi-statute (no §101) | 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| FLANAGAN, BEVERLY MEINDL | 1 | 73.0% | +20.4% |
| GILL, JENNIFER FRANCES | 1 | 28.3% | +47.3% |
Multi-statute / §101-driven matters, or cases in front of an examiner with an allow rate under 30%. The top 1 ordered by deadline are shown.
| App # | Title | Examiner | Due in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17050547 | INTERDENTAL CLEANING TOOL | GILL, JENNIFER FRANCES | 149d overdue |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17050547 | INTERDENTAL CLEANING TOOL | GILL, JENNIFER FRANCES | 149d overdue |
| 18553444 | FILM USED FOR OUTER BAG FOR CHEMICAL BODY WARMER | FLANAGAN, BEVERLY MEINDL | 31d overdue |
| Art Unit | Apps |
|---|---|
| 3794 | 1 |
| 3772 | 1 |
| App # | Title | Examiner | Art Unit | Statutes | Status | Due in | AI | Filed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18553444 | FILM USED FOR OUTER BAG FOR CHEMICAL BODY WARMER | FLANAGAN, BEVERLY MEINDL | 3794 | §103 | Non-Final OA | 31d overdue | Pending | Sep 29, 2023 |
| 17050547 | INTERDENTAL CLEANING TOOL | GILL, JENNIFER FRANCES | 3772 | §102§103§112 | Non-Final OA | 149d overdue | Pending | Jun 02, 2021 |
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