Prosecution Insights
Prosecution Insights
Technology areas: Transportation, E-Commerce & Mechanical Systems • Medical Devices & Mechanical Engineering
3 pending office actions • 3 art units • 3 examiners • 0 of 3 (0%) have an AI response strategy ready • 2 patents granted in the last 365 days
ULC Technologies LLC currently has 3 pending office actions within the Transportation, E-Commerce & Mechanical Systems technology area. The prosecution of these matters is decentralized, as they are distributed across distinct examiners. Furthermore, each of these actions is situated in a different technical environment, with 3 distinct art units represented in the data.
The workload is spread across the examining staff. THOMAS ANDREW FINK is the busiest examiner, yet he is responsible for only 1 pending office action. Because each pending matter is handled by a different person in a different art unit, the company cannot rely on a single point of contact or a unified examiner relationship to advance its portfolio. Instead, the legal team must manage multiple unique interactions simultaneously.
This distribution across the art units suggests that the company's innovations are being evaluated under different sets of technical standards. With the examiners involved, the company must tailor its arguments to various perspectives. This structure requires a broad prosecution approach despite the relatively small number of pending office actions currently active.
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 (33%) |
| Multi-statute (no §101) | 2 (67%) |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| FINK, THOMAS ANDREW | 1 | 65.0% | +32.4% |
| BUCK, MATTHEW R | 1 | 83.3% | +14.4% |
| BARLOW, ADAM G | 1 | 70.9% | +19.6% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18444097 | VACUUM EXCAVATION FOR LOCAL TRANSMISSION SYSTEM AND METHOD | BUCK, MATTHEW R | 1d overdue |
| 17566925 | BRACKET USABLE FOR SOLAR PANEL MODULE INSTALLATION | BARLOW, ADAM G | — |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18444097 | VACUUM EXCAVATION FOR LOCAL TRANSMISSION SYSTEM AND METHOD | BUCK, MATTHEW R | 1d overdue |
| 19175645 | COMPRESSOR SYSTEM FOR EVACUATING UTILITY PIPE | FINK, THOMAS ANDREW | — |
| 17566925 | BRACKET USABLE FOR SOLAR PANEL MODULE INSTALLATION | BARLOW, ADAM G | — |
| Art Unit | Apps |
|---|---|
| 3746 | 1 |
| 3672 | 1 |
| 3633 | 1 |
| App # | Title | Examiner | Art Unit | Statutes | Status | Due in | AI | Filed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19175645 | COMPRESSOR SYSTEM FOR EVACUATING UTILITY PIPE | FINK, THOMAS ANDREW | 3746 | §103 | Non-Final OA | — | Pending | Apr 10, 2025 |
| 18444097 | VACUUM EXCAVATION FOR LOCAL TRANSMISSION SYSTEM AND METHOD | BUCK, MATTHEW R | 3672 | §102§103 | Final Rejection | 1d overdue | Pending | Feb 16, 2024 |
| 17566925 | BRACKET USABLE FOR SOLAR PANEL MODULE INSTALLATION | BARLOW, ADAM G | 3633 | §102§103§112 | Final Rejection | — | Pending | Dec 31, 2021 |
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