Generally, the patent application process is clear-cut: draft an ironclad application, submit it, wait for it to be examined, pay the issue fee, and receive your new patent. But sometimes even though you’ve done everything as correctly as possible to make the case for your invention, your examiner disagrees. They issue an office action picking apart all the claims you painstakingly assembled. And when you file your response arguing for your claims, they refuse to see the light, giving you a final office action.
It stings, to say the least. You are bewildered and wondering where things went wrong. Whose fault is this, yours or the examiner’s? (And you’re probably leaning toward the latter response.)
Good news! You can actually see detailed statistics for any examiner’s allowance rate. Thanks to publically available data, there are databases that let you see your examiner’s history of patent application outcomes. You can even check how the examiner stacks up compared to the rest of the art unit and other examiners. Wondering how many patents this person has, say, allowed after initial rejection without an interview versus how many allowed with an interview? That’s the level of detail available.
Now you can have a better picture of whether your application fell into the hands of a ruthless nitpicker, or if the examiner is fairly lenient and any concerns they have are legitimate.
