The Most Difficult Examiners at the USPTO (2017)

In July of 2016, we published an article titled “The Most Difficult Examiners at the USPTO,” in which we identified the top 10 patent examiners across all art units whose allowance rates were the lowest. For most patent prosecutors, their examiner’s allowance rate is the clearest indicator of the overall difficulty of prosecuting a patent with that examiner, since a low allowance rate means that there likely will be more office actions, claim scope will be harder to retain, and the prosecution timeline will be longer. Thus, it is helpful for a patent prosecutor to know what his or her examiner’s allowance rate is right from the start of the prosecution in order to plan and advise clients accordingly.

This year, we’ve update our original list and found some fresh names. In order to be eligible for inclusion on this list, each examiner must have examined at least 100 applications over the 10-year period from 2006 to 2015. Please note that some of these examiners may be active in more than one art unit or may have worked in different art units over the period we studied. The art unit we display for each examiner is based off of the examiner’s current office location according to the USPTO’s employee locator.

Hover over the graph below for detail.

Imagine having your application assigned to one of the above examiners (or one with a similarly low allowance rate) without knowing what your chances are of obtaining an allowance up front. Fortunately, big data offers a solution to that problem by allowing patent prosecutors to know what their chances are going in and explain their strategy to their clients with confidence. Sign up today and see what Juristat can show you.