Posts Tagged: "Appeal Brief"

This data set shows that Oral Hearings are rarely conducted. (See Figure 1.) Across the 72,443 appeals, only 459 (0.63%) appeals had an Oral Hearing… As shown in Figure 4, Oral Hearings were associated with more full-rejection reversals (blue bars). Specifically, the full reversals accounted for 40.3% of the appeals with Oral Hearings, as compared to 32.5% of the appeals without Oral Hearings.

Due to a bizarre jurisdictional “feature,” the Board does not actually get jurisdiction over a case until either a Reply Brief has been filed or the time to file a Reply Brief has run. See 37 CFR 41.35(a). What this means is the patent examiner, in order to frustrate the applicant’s ability to have the Board hear a case, can simply refuse to file an Examiner’s Answer and instead reopen prosecution. This happens all too frequently in some Art Units.

We set out to study the life cycle of appeals by conducting a stage-by-stage analysis to identify what fraction of applications were exiting the appeal cycle and how. Specifically, we obtained data (using LexisNexis® PatentAdvisorSM) corresponding to each appeal brief filed between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2011. The data identified the stage at which the appeal exited the appeal process and the next significant event after exiting the appeal process. This assessment thus provides information pertinent to assessing what delays, costs and decision outcomes are truly associated with appeals… Examiners frequently terminate an appeal cycle expediently with an office action (often leading to an allowance) or an allowance, in which case the delay and a portion of the expense is avoided.