Prosecution Insights
Prosecution Insights
Technology areas: Chemistry & Materials • Semiconductors, Circuits & Optics • Medical Devices & Mechanical Engineering
3 pending office actions • 3 art units • 3 examiners • 0 of 3 (0%) have an AI response strategy ready • 1 patents granted in the last 365 days
The University of South Africa manages a company patent portfolio in the Semiconductors, Circuits & Optics technology area. The portfolio currently includes 3 pending office actions. These 3 pending office actions are spread across 3 distinct examiners and 3 distinct art units. This one-to-one-to-one relationship between actions, examiners, and units indicates a highly diversified prosecution landscape where no two cases share the same personnel or department.
SEVEN, EVREN is the busiest examiner for the university, handling 1 busiest examiner pending office action. Given that there are 3 pending office actions and 3 distinct examiners, the workload is perfectly balanced with each examiner managing exactly one case. The 3 distinct art units suggest that the university's research in semiconductors and optics is being evaluated across three different specialized groups at the USPTO.
Practitioners must manage three separate examiner relationships to advance these 3 pending office actions. Because each of the 3 distinct examiners is in a different art unit, the university faces a diverse set of examination environments. The busiest examiner's workload of 1 pending action confirms that no single individual has an outsized influence on the portfolio's current status.
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 (67%) |
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEVEN, EVREN | 1 | 74.5% | +8.6% |
| DODSON, JUSTIN C | 1 | 46.8% | +35.6% |
| RIETH, STEPHEN EDWARD | 1 | 45.8% | +32.9% |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17282593 | MEMBRANES FOR MEMBRANE DISTILLATION DESALINATION TECHNOLOGY | RIETH, STEPHEN EDWARD | — |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18247483 | METHOD OF PRODUCING A NANOFLUID USING LASER ABLATION, CORRESPONDING NANOFLUID AND LASER ABLATION SYSTEM FOR MANUFACTURING NANOFLUIDS | DODSON, JUSTIN C | — |
| 17282593 | MEMBRANES FOR MEMBRANE DISTILLATION DESALINATION TECHNOLOGY | RIETH, STEPHEN EDWARD | — |
| Art Unit | Apps |
|---|---|
| 2812 | 1 |
| 3761 | 1 |
| 1759 | 1 |
| App # | Title | Examiner | Art Unit | Statutes | Status | Due in | AI | Filed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18685147 | Non-Volatile Resistive Random-Access Memory and a Manufacturing Method Thereof | SEVEN, EVREN | 2812 | §103 | Final Rejection | 6d | Pending | Feb 20, 2024 |
| 18247483 | METHOD OF PRODUCING A NANOFLUID USING LASER ABLATION, CORRESPONDING NANOFLUID AND LASER ABLATION SYSTEM FOR MANUFACTURING NANOFLUIDS | DODSON, JUSTIN C | 3761 | §103 | Final Rejection | — | Pending | Mar 31, 2023 |
| 17282593 | MEMBRANES FOR MEMBRANE DISTILLATION DESALINATION TECHNOLOGY | RIETH, STEPHEN EDWARD | 1759 | §103§112 | Final Rejection | — | Pending | Apr 02, 2021 |
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