![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ndrosenLast week, my SPE (supervisory patent examiner) held a brief meeting to announce that he would soon be assigned to a different area of the Patent Office (things seem to be a bit of a mess there). We’re part of a triplet of Art Units working on the same kinds of applications, so the other two SPEs will pick up the slack. He didn’t want to be transferred, and I don’t much want to see him go, but there isn’t much to be done.
I was searching for prior art against one of my applications a little while ago, and I found a published patent application from a few years back that seemed relevant. When I checked its history (to learn whether there was an issued patent, or a continuation case, etc.), I found something unusual: the applicant had appealed the examiner’s rejection not just to the Board of Appeals, but to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The CAFC had affirmed the rejection.
This doesn’t happen too often. In over twenty years, I have had a number of cases appealed to the Board (most affirmed, some overturned or affirmed in part), but only one was ever appealed to the CAFC, and that time, after paying a fee and starting the process, the applicant dropped the matter, and did not actually argue before the CAFC, so I never learned what the judges would have thought of my rejections.
I was searching for prior art against one of my applications a little while ago, and I found a published patent application from a few years back that seemed relevant. When I checked its history (to learn whether there was an issued patent, or a continuation case, etc.), I found something unusual: the applicant had appealed the examiner’s rejection not just to the Board of Appeals, but to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The CAFC had affirmed the rejection.
This doesn’t happen too often. In over twenty years, I have had a number of cases appealed to the Board (most affirmed, some overturned or affirmed in part), but only one was ever appealed to the CAFC, and that time, after paying a fee and starting the process, the applicant dropped the matter, and did not actually argue before the CAFC, so I never learned what the judges would have thought of my rejections.
