Prosecution Insights
Prosecution Insights
Technology area: Medical Devices & Mechanical Engineering
2 pending office actions • 1 art units • 2 examiners • 0 of 2 (0%) have an AI response strategy ready
Tactile Orthopaedics Inc. has 2 pending office actions in the Medical Devices & Mechanical Engineering technology area. These actions are split between 2 distinct examiners but are both located within 1 distinct art unit. ALVESTEFFER, STEPHEN D is the busiest examiner, responsible for 1 pending office action. This suggests that while the technical focus is narrow, the company must manage the specific review styles of 2 different examiners within the same art unit.
Managing 2 pending office actions within 1 distinct art unit allows for technical consistency in the prosecution strategy, even with 2 distinct examiners involved. The applicant can leverage successful arguments from one case to inform the other, provided they align with the shared art unit's guidelines. This structure balances individual examiner review with a unified technical classification. Practitioners should focus on maintaining a consistent technical narrative across both pending matters to optimize outcomes within the Medical Devices & Mechanical Engineering sector.
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 |
|---|---|
| §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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ALVESTEFFER, STEPHEN D | 1 | 57.2% | +24.8% |
| FRISBY, KESHA | 1 | 52.8% | +23.2% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18279572 | TACTILE TISSUE SIMULATING STRUCTURES | ALVESTEFFER, STEPHEN D | — |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18221059 | SYSTEM FOR ORTHOPAEDIC SURGERY TRAINING | FRISBY, KESHA | 3d overdue |
| 18279572 | TACTILE TISSUE SIMULATING STRUCTURES | ALVESTEFFER, STEPHEN D | — |
| Art Unit | Apps |
|---|---|
| 3715 | 2 |
| App # | Title | Examiner | Art Unit | Statutes | Status | Due in | AI | Filed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18279572 | TACTILE TISSUE SIMULATING STRUCTURES | ALVESTEFFER, STEPHEN D | 3715 | §103§112 | Final Rejection | — | Pending | Aug 30, 2023 |
| 18221059 | SYSTEM FOR ORTHOPAEDIC SURGERY TRAINING | FRISBY, KESHA | 3715 | §103 | Non-Final OA | 3d overdue | Pending | Jul 12, 2023 |
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