Prosecution Insights
Prosecution Insights
Technology area: Chemistry & Materials
2 pending office actions • 2 art units • 2 examiners • 0 of 2 (0%) have an AI response strategy ready • 1 patents granted in the last 365 days
UNIVERSITY OF EXETER is currently managing 2 pending office actions in the Chemistry & Materials technology area. These actions are distributed across 2 distinct examiners and 2 distinct art units, indicating that the portfolio's current challenges are spread across different technical specialties. This distribution requires a strategy that accounts for varying examiner perspectives and art unit norms. Practitioners must navigate different procedural expectations as they address the unique requirements of each art unit involved in the chemistry sector. This structure suggests that the company's intellectual property covers different technical sub-fields within the broader chemistry category.
MERCHLINSKY, JOSEPH CULLEN is the busiest examiner, with 1 pending office action under review. Since the 2 pending actions are split between 2 distinct examiners, no single individual controls the majority of the portfolio's current prosecution. Practitioners must manage the 2 distinct art units separately, as each may have different procedural expectations for chemistry-related filings. Successfully resolving these matters will depend on tailoring responses to the specific technical feedback provided within the 2 distinct art units and understanding the individual tendencies of each examiner. This balance allows for a diversified approach to prosecution, though it requires tracking the specific tendencies of both examiners.
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 | 2 (100%) |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| MERCHLINSKY, JOSEPH CULLEN | 1 | 5.9% | -6.3% |
| CULBERT, ROBERTS P | 1 | 81.5% | -3.3% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18014406 | Control of Processing Equipment | CULBERT, ROBERTS P | 43d overdue |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18257090 | WATERCRESS EXTRACTION METHOD | MERCHLINSKY, JOSEPH CULLEN | — |
| Art Unit | Apps |
|---|---|
| 1791 | 1 |
| 1716 | 1 |
| App # | Title | Examiner | Art Unit | Statutes | Status | Due in | AI | Filed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18257090 | WATERCRESS EXTRACTION METHOD | MERCHLINSKY, JOSEPH CULLEN | 1791 | §103 | Final Rejection | — | Pending | Jun 12, 2023 |
| 18014406 | Control of Processing Equipment | CULBERT, ROBERTS P | 1716 | §103 | Final Rejection | 43d overdue | Pending | Jan 04, 2023 |
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