Prosecution Insights
Prosecution Insights
Technology area: Biotechnology & Pharmaceuticals
5 pending office actions • 2 art units • 5 examiners • 0 of 5 (0%) have an AI response strategy ready • 11 patents granted in the last 365 days
Pacific Biosciences of California Inc. currently has 5 pending office actions within the Biotechnology & Pharmaceuticals technology area. These actions are distributed among 5 distinct examiners, meaning each examiner is responsible for exactly one pending matter. Despite the involvement of 5 distinct examiners, the portfolio is concentrated within only 2 distinct art units. This concentration suggests a focused technical scope within the Biotechnology & Pharmaceuticals field.
PETKOVSEK, DANIEL is identified as the busiest examiner for the company, currently overseeing 1 pending office action. Since there are 5 pending office actions and 5 distinct examiners, the workload is evenly split across the assigned staff. The concentration of these 5 pending office actions within just 2 distinct art units suggests that the company's applications are technically related enough to be handled by a limited number of administrative groups. This profile shows an active prosecution phase where the company engages with multiple examiners while maintaining a relatively narrow administrative footprint at the patent office, requiring consistent technical arguments across the 2 distinct 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 (20%) |
| §102 only | 1 (20%) |
| §112 only | 1 (20%) |
| Multi-statute (no §101) | 2 (40%) |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| PETKOVSEK, DANIEL | 1 | 83.5% | +9.4% |
| RILEY, JEZIA | 1 | 82.9% | +7.3% |
| LU, FRANK WEI MIN | 1 | 62.7% | +67.7% |
| LAFAVE, ELIZABETH ROSE | 1 | 62.5% | +45.4% |
| FLINDERS, JEREMY C | 1 | 63.5% | +16.7% |
Cases in front of an examiner with an allow rate of 80%+ where the difficulty is Easy or Medium. The top 1 ordered by deadline are shown.
| App # | Title | Examiner | Due in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18773005 | MODIFIED NUCLEOTIDE REAGENTS | RILEY, JEZIA | — |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17923506 | COMPOSITIONS AND METHODS FOR MODIFYING POLYMERASE-NUCLEIC ACID COMPLEXES | LAFAVE, ELIZABETH ROSE | 15d |
| 18894221 | Illumination of Optical Analytical Devices | PETKOVSEK, DANIEL | — |
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 3 ordered by deadline are shown.
| App # | Title | Examiner | Due in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17575094 | SURFACE STRUCTURING WITH COLLOIDAL ASSEMBLY | FLINDERS, JEREMY C | 31d overdue |
| 17923506 | COMPOSITIONS AND METHODS FOR MODIFYING POLYMERASE-NUCLEIC ACID COMPLEXES | LAFAVE, ELIZABETH ROSE | 15d |
| 18240199 | MODIFIED BIOTIN-BINDING PROTEINS FOR IMMOBILIZATION | LU, FRANK WEI MIN | — |
| Art Unit | Apps |
|---|---|
| 1684 | 2 |
| 1683 | 1 |
| App # | Title | Examiner | Art Unit | Statutes | Status | Due in | AI | Filed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18894221 | Illumination of Optical Analytical Devices | PETKOVSEK, DANIEL | — | §103§112 | Non-Final OA | — | Pending | Sep 24, 2024 |
| 18773005 | MODIFIED NUCLEOTIDE REAGENTS | RILEY, JEZIA | — | §102Other | Non-Final OA | — | Pending | Jul 15, 2024 |
| 18240199 | MODIFIED BIOTIN-BINDING PROTEINS FOR IMMOBILIZATION | LU, FRANK WEI MIN | 1683 | §112 | Non-Final OA | — | Pending | Aug 30, 2023 |
| 17923506 | COMPOSITIONS AND METHODS FOR MODIFYING POLYMERASE-NUCLEIC ACID COMPLEXES | LAFAVE, ELIZABETH ROSE | 1684 | §102§103 | Non-Final OA | 15d | Pending | Nov 04, 2022 |
| 17575094 | SURFACE STRUCTURING WITH COLLOIDAL ASSEMBLY | FLINDERS, JEREMY C | 1684 | §103 | Non-Final OA | 31d overdue | Pending | Jan 13, 2022 |
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