Prosecution Insights
Prosecution Insights
Technology areas: Semiconductors, Circuits & Optics • Medical Devices & Mechanical Engineering
3 pending office actions • 2 art units • 3 examiners • 0 of 3 (0%) have an AI response strategy ready • 12 patents granted in the last 365 days
Simplehuman LLC currently manages 3 pending office actions within its patent portfolio. This legal activity is categorized under the Medical Devices & Mechanical Engineering technology area. The prosecution process involves 3 distinct examiners and is distributed across 2 distinct art units. THOMAS, KAREEN KAY is the busiest examiner associated with the company, holding responsibility for 1 pending office action.
This volume of 3 pending office actions reflects the company's current engagement with the patent office. The presence of 2 distinct art units indicates how the company's patent challenges are spread across different technical divisions. Practitioners can observe that the workload is distributed among 3 distinct examiners, which requires managing multiple individual examiner timelines and preferences simultaneously. This interaction within the Medical Devices & Mechanical Engineering portfolio necessitates careful coordination between the applicant and the office staff. The data shows a portfolio where active matters are reviewed by THOMAS, KAREEN KAY and other officials, requiring a tailored approach to each outstanding issue. Each examiner and the 2 distinct art units involved may have unique procedural expectations that the company must navigate to advance its intellectual property goals.
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 (33%) |
| §102 only | 1 (33%) |
| Multi-statute (no §101) | 1 (33%) |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| THOMAS, KAREEN KAY | 1 | 77.0% | +17.1% |
| CRESPO FEBLES, HECTOR J | 1 | 100.0% | +0.0% |
| LUO, DAVID S | 1 | 90.4% | +6.5% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18991187 | VOICE-ACTIVATED VANITY MIRROR | CRESPO FEBLES, HECTOR J | — |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18765742 | ULTRASONIC SENSING TRASH CAN | LUO, DAVID S | — |
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 1 ordered by deadline are shown.
| App # | Title | Examiner | Due in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 19078023 | RECEPTACLE ASSEMBLIES WITH USER ASSIST | THOMAS, KAREEN KAY | — |
| Art Unit | Apps |
|---|---|
| 3736 | 1 |
| 2846 | 1 |
| App # | Title | Examiner | Art Unit | Statutes | Status | Due in | AI | Filed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19078023 | RECEPTACLE ASSEMBLIES WITH USER ASSIST | THOMAS, KAREEN KAY | 3736 | §102 | Non-Final OA | — | Pending | Mar 12, 2025 |
| 18991187 | VOICE-ACTIVATED VANITY MIRROR | CRESPO FEBLES, HECTOR J | — | §103 | Non-Final OA | — | Pending | Dec 20, 2024 |
| 18765742 | ULTRASONIC SENSING TRASH CAN | LUO, DAVID S | 2846 | §102§103 | Non-Final OA | — | Pending | Jul 08, 2024 |
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