Prosecution Insights
Prosecution Insights
Technology area: Chemistry & Materials
6 pending office actions • 4 art units • 6 examiners • 0 of 6 (0%) have an AI response strategy ready • 3 patents granted in the last 365 days
Pattern Bioscience Inc. has 5 pending office actions in the Chemistry & Materials technology area. These actions are handled by 5 distinct examiners across 4 distinct art units. WRIGHT, PATRICIA KATHRYN is the busiest examiner with 1 pending action. The use of 4 distinct art units for 5 actions suggests that the company's chemical and material innovations span several specialized technical fields. Because each of the 5 pending office actions is assigned to a different examiner, the company must manage multiple sets of examiner expectations and prosecution styles simultaneously.
The presence of 4 distinct art units suggests that the company's innovations are being reviewed by several specialized technical groups at the USPTO. This distribution means that the prosecution risk is spread across different administrative units, rather than being concentrated in a single art unit. For practitioners, this requires a strategy that can adapt to the specific precedents and examination standards of the 4 distinct art units involved. With the workload split among 5 distinct examiners, the company's immediate patenting success is not dependent on any single individual, but rather on the outcomes of independent review processes. This lack of examiner concentration can lead to varying timelines for the pending office actions currently in the pipeline.
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 (17%) |
| Multi-statute (no §101) | 5 (83%) |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WRIGHT, PATRICIA KATHRYN | 1 | 65.3% | +42.6% |
| ALABI, OYELEYE A | 1 | 84.0% | +25.2% |
| NGUYEN, HENRY H | 1 | 63.7% | +37.2% |
| HERBERT, MADISON TAYLOR | 1 | 59.1% | +53.7% |
| KASS, BENJAMIN JOSEPH | 1 | 32.6% | +58.9% |
| HYUN, PAUL SANG HWA | 1 | 69.8% | +36.5% |
Multi-statute / §101-driven matters, or cases in front of an examiner with an allow rate under 30%. The top 5 ordered by deadline are shown.
| App # | Title | Examiner | Due in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17063637 | Droplet-Generating Microfluidic Chips and Related Methods | HYUN, PAUL SANG HWA | 72d |
| 18898377 | Apparatuses for Contactless Loading and Imaging of Microfluidic Chips and Related Methods | WRIGHT, PATRICIA KATHRYN | — |
| 18754373 | METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR FORMING 2-DIMENSIONAL DROP ARRAYS | ALABI, OYELEYE A | — |
| 18054326 | Systems and Methods for Loading Reagent-Containing Microfluidic Chips Having Single-Use Valves | NGUYEN, HENRY H | — |
| 17663814 | Vacuum-Loaded, Droplet-Generating Microfluidic Chips and Related Methods | KASS, BENJAMIN JOSEPH | — |
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 6 ordered by deadline are shown.
| App # | Title | Examiner | Due in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17815957 | SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR LOADING REAGENT-CONTAINING MICROFLUIDIC CHIPS | HERBERT, MADISON TAYLOR | 33d |
| 17063637 | Droplet-Generating Microfluidic Chips and Related Methods | HYUN, PAUL SANG HWA | 72d |
| 18898377 | Apparatuses for Contactless Loading and Imaging of Microfluidic Chips and Related Methods | WRIGHT, PATRICIA KATHRYN | — |
| 18754373 | METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR FORMING 2-DIMENSIONAL DROP ARRAYS | ALABI, OYELEYE A | — |
| 18054326 | Systems and Methods for Loading Reagent-Containing Microfluidic Chips Having Single-Use Valves | NGUYEN, HENRY H | — |
| 17663814 | Vacuum-Loaded, Droplet-Generating Microfluidic Chips and Related Methods | KASS, BENJAMIN JOSEPH | — |
| Art Unit | Apps |
|---|---|
| 1798 | 2 |
| 1797 | 1 |
| 1758 | 1 |
| 1796 | 1 |
| App # | Title | Examiner | Art Unit | Statutes | Status | Due in | AI | Filed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18898377 | Apparatuses for Contactless Loading and Imaging of Microfluidic Chips and Related Methods | WRIGHT, PATRICIA KATHRYN | — | §102§103 | Non-Final OA | — | Pending | Sep 26, 2024 |
| 18754373 | METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR FORMING 2-DIMENSIONAL DROP ARRAYS | ALABI, OYELEYE A | 1797 | §103§112 | Non-Final OA | — | Pending | Jun 26, 2024 |
| 18054326 | Systems and Methods for Loading Reagent-Containing Microfluidic Chips Having Single-Use Valves | NGUYEN, HENRY H | 1798 | §103§112 | Non-Final OA | — | Pending | Nov 10, 2022 |
| 17815957 | SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR LOADING REAGENT-CONTAINING MICROFLUIDIC CHIPS | HERBERT, MADISON TAYLOR | 1758 | §103 | Non-Final OA | 33d | Pending | Jul 29, 2022 |
| 17663814 | Vacuum-Loaded, Droplet-Generating Microfluidic Chips and Related Methods | KASS, BENJAMIN JOSEPH | 1798 | §102§103 | Non-Final OA | — | Pending | May 17, 2022 |
| 17063637 | Droplet-Generating Microfluidic Chips and Related Methods | HYUN, PAUL SANG HWA | 1796 | §102§103 | Non-Final OA | 72d | Pending | Oct 05, 2020 |
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