I share your dissatisfaction about the previous Doll administration. The claims & continuations rules were a disaster (I spent around 100 unbilled hours reviewing cases and taking precautionary measures), but imagine if they were actually enacted. Then the wait to get an appeal would probably be over 5 years by now. And the second set of eyes was seriously flawed in how it was applied. If I was an examiner and I could be penalized for allowing a case but faced no repurcussions for giving rejection after rejection, I suppose I too would be reluctant to allow anything. This modality caused great animosity between attorney and examiner, which is too bad because I don’t consider examiners to be the bad guys. Unfortunately, I have had to let applications go abandoned because the inventors couldn’t afford to keep up the fight even though the claims were (in my opinion) clearly patentable.

Kappos has inherited a difficult situation and I wish him well. As far as the new rules package, he may as well wait until the CAFC rules en banc just so the USPTO has guidance in the future as to what they can and cannot do. However, after the ruling comes out, I do expect (hope) he will officially announce them “dead.”