Prosecution Insights
Prosecution Insights
Technology areas: Chemistry & Materials • Medical Devices & Mechanical Engineering
4 pending office actions • 3 art units • 4 examiners • 0 of 4 (0%) have an AI response strategy ready • 12 patents granted in the last 365 days
The Charles Machine Works Inc. has 5 pending office actions in the Medical Devices & Mechanical Engineering technology area. These actions are assigned to 5 distinct examiners, creating a scenario where the number of actions is equal to the number of examiners. These matters are distributed across 3 distinct art units, indicating that the company's mechanical engineering applications are categorized into several different technical specialties.
SMALLEY, JAMES N is the busiest examiner for the portfolio. This examiner is currently managing 1 busiest examiner pending office action. The spread of 5 actions across 5 examiners suggests that the prosecution workload is not concentrated under any 1 individual. This decentralized approach requires the company to manage 5 different examiner relationships. With 3 distinct art units involved, the company must also adapt to the specific examination cultures of multiple departments within the patent office. This distribution minimizes the risk of a single examiner's bias affecting the entire portfolio.
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 | 2 (50%) |
| §112 only | 1 (25%) |
| Multi-statute (no §101) | 1 (25%) |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| SMALLEY, JAMES N | 1 | 70.7% | -9.9% |
| ANDRISH, SEAN D | 1 | 71.5% | +32.1% |
| SHAKERI, HADI | 1 | 62.1% | +37.0% |
| JEONG, YOUNGSUL | 1 | 71.5% | +21.6% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 19090013 | AUTONOMOUS BACKFILLING APPARATUS | ANDRISH, SEAN 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 3 ordered by deadline are shown.
| App # | Title | Examiner | Due in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18078768 | MULTI-CYCLONE VACUUM EXCAVATION SYSTEM | JEONG, YOUNGSUL | 7d |
| 18441097 | WRENCH WITH OVER-CENTER JAWS | SHAKERI, HADI | 34d |
| 19090013 | AUTONOMOUS BACKFILLING APPARATUS | ANDRISH, SEAN D | — |
| Art Unit | Apps |
|---|---|
| 3733 | 1 |
| 3723 | 1 |
| 1772 | 1 |
| App # | Title | Examiner | Art Unit | Statutes | Status | Due in | AI | Filed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19215831 | VACUUM TANK DOOR LATCHING ASSEMBLY | SMALLEY, JAMES N | 3733 | §112 | Non-Final OA | — | Pending | May 22, 2025 |
| 19090013 | AUTONOMOUS BACKFILLING APPARATUS | ANDRISH, SEAN D | — | §103§112 | Non-Final OA | — | Pending | Mar 25, 2025 |
| 18441097 | WRENCH WITH OVER-CENTER JAWS | SHAKERI, HADI | 3723 | §103 | Final Rejection | 34d | Pending | Feb 14, 2024 |
| 18078768 | MULTI-CYCLONE VACUUM EXCAVATION SYSTEM | JEONG, YOUNGSUL | 1772 | §103 | Non-Final OA | 7d | Pending | Dec 09, 2022 |
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