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As a pro se inventor, my examiner seems to be taking advantage of my supposed ignorance.
False. You are most likely not being singled out because you are a pro se applicant. Examiners are after “counts” (work credit), and the easiest way for Examiners to earn counts is to reject. They also earn counts when they allow, but if they allow bad applications, ...
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They are all required to have at least a B.S in a science or engineering field but are not necessarily assigned to their specific expertise. Much of the subject matter education is on the job.
However, the examining corp is organized into Technology Centers. One of them is 2400 that covers "Computer networking, Multiplex communication, Cryptography/...
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First, call the supervisor (SPE). His/her name and number should be listed at the end of each office action. Most likely the SPE will set up an interview with you, the examiner and the SPE.
During the interview you can try to argue your point, but if that is not immediately fruitful, let me suggest another approach: Try hard to understand precisely what ...
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Eric Shain provides a good answer which can work. There is a risk associated with that route, though: you might upset the examiner by going over his/her head. At the end of the day, if going to the supervisor is the only route forward, then it must be done.
But before going that far, you might consider having a phone interview. In my limited experience, ...
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I'm not a lawyer, but during the prosecution of one of my patents, the examiner was clearly misinterpreting some prior art. Sort of the equivalent of saying that a bicycle is the technical equivalent of an airplane because both can be used to transport people. After several rounds of ineffective communications with the examiner my attorney raised the issue ...
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However you are not sure the examiner is correct. Examiners decisions are frequently overturned by the courts.
Yes, Examiners can be wrong, but failure of an Examiner to issue a restriction requirement where one was appropriate doesn't sound like something that can be used to invalidate an issued patent (I haven't researched this in depth but I would be ...
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Before publication, the examiner can't cite it. After it publishes, it can be used as prior art, back dated with the date of the filing or priority date.
To contrast a patent with other publications: There is a delay between when a a paper is submitted to a journal and when it publishes. Its date for counting as prior art is the day the first copy of the ...
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Call the examiner's supervisor (SPE).
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This is an obvious error. The US 7,439,877 patent citation is the correct one because it is in the same space and has the same inventor as the patent in question. The two identifiers are only off by a single digit and have the same publication date:
US7439877 May 18, 2007 Oct 21, 2008 Philip Onni Jarvinen Total impedance and complex dielectric ...
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None. The examiner is not the person you should have in mind when determining how you explain your invention.
The “person skilled in the art“ must be able to make/build your invention from the description. While the person skilled in the art is not a real person, they can be assumed to have a relevant background both educational and working experience.
...
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Any claim that is not either objected to or rejected is inherently accepted so they all need to be dealt with in the first office action. The independent claim might be non-novel or obvious but any of the dependent claims might add enough limitations to achieve patentablity.
I strongly advise to not have that many claims. It might be annoying to the ...
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Normally SPEs do not examine patent applications but are examined by PEs/AEs. PEs/AEs apprise, consult respective SPE and office action intimation are issued as suggested or advised by SPE. Your application in all likely hood is to be assigned to a PE as mentioned in the communication - "The application is waiting to be assigned a examiner."
For ...
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This is entirely anecdotal. I worked for years in a large medical products firm. Patents were essential and R&D spending was not impacted by patent office challenges. However, it is certainly possible that in other industries with faster product life cycles, pursuing patents is seen as less important. Even so, I kind of doubt it impacts R&D spending ...
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From your question it looks like it has come off a queue and been assigned to an art unit. The SPE is the manager of the art unit and has the job to assign the examination to someone in that unit. There will be a queue to go through and then it will be assigned. Then it is in the queue of the specific examiner who will do the examination under the SPE's ...
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In my country we can ask for a senior patent examiner to review the matter. I have previously used that as a technique to have the examiner have a realistic viewpoint. Also we have an appeals process whereby we can appeal a decision of the Commissioner.
If I was you I would hire a patent attorney (or whatever they are called in your country) and have the ...
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The normal practice at the USPTO is that all co_pending applications (continuations, divisionals, CIP) are examined by the same examiner. The only way that I know to change examiners is if the subject matter of the claims were amended so that the application would be assigned to a different technology center. However, that is a fairly drastic step.
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Priority is a tricky issue. Just because an applicant claims priority from some other application does not automatically mean it is valid. The examiner may find the priority claim to be unfounded. This is for instance the case if the claim contains subject-matter that is not contained in the priority document. Applicants often try to sneak in additional ...
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If the SPE doesn't help, call the ombudsman's office or the TC director.
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If the goal of a patent is to merely document the existence of some novelty without trying to claim the world while you are at it, can an examiner's claim speed the process along?
If the patent application has published, then the goal has already been achieved. Next time, save thousands of dollars by using a defensive publication service rather than filing ...
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