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I observe that silent stonewalling by examiners has gone from rare to common over 25 years. Can you confirm my anecdotal observation, that I'm not personally hallucinating? If you have an example, can you email me one or two papers (off-list)? <a href="mailto:DavidBoundyEsq@gmail.com">DavidBoundyEsq@gmail.com</a>
</div><div><br></div><div><b>Background and why I'm asking. </b>With a couple coauthors (Trujillo, Soucy, Katznelson, Snowden) I am working on an article about ex parte appeals -- how to recognize "it's time," what you do during regulation time to make appeal overtime successful, how to write a good brief, the perverse incentives and blind spots for examiners and APJs that you have to work around, how to set up for Federal Circuit appeal or section 145 in EDVa, etc. (Thank you especially to David Soucy who prompted the reevaluation from just the mechanics of a good brief to a strategic end-to-end, to Doreen for adding a life sciences perspective, to Ron Katznelson who has some unique experience, and to Tim Snowden who added a number of wise observations). This will turn into a practitioner workshop at AIPLA in Minneapolis in May.</div><div><br></div><div>Also Secretary Lutnick has expressed his displeasure at the delays in PTO proceedings (we were certainly seeing it in business methods groups when I worked for him 2007-2014).</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><b>Are you seeing the same thing I am? </b>A major topic of the article is how to address examiners that simply ignore issues. Silence/stonewalling makes it <b>really</b> hard to appeal, because you can't tell what the issue is -- do we disagree about claim construction, do we disagree about the content of the reference, do we disagree about what law governs, do we disagree about application of law to facts, or about something else entirely? When the examiner is mutely stonewalling, there's really nothing you can do. No matter how you jump up and down in your papers, phone the SPE, complain to the T.C. Director, petition, there is NOTHING you can do to get a silent/lazy/passive aggressive examiner who's just milking counts to engage with an issue. (note that every step in the chain, from examiner to SPE to T.C. Director, gets evaluated by numbers of actions sent out -- as far as I can tell, there is <b>zero</b> evaluation for quality/completeness.)<br></div><div><br></div><div>This morning, I realized that in the last two years, 2/3 of my allowances have involved at least a pre-appeal. 100% of my appeal briefs are bottomed on examiner silence. 20 years ago, you'd get a stonewalling examiner one time in ten. Now, at least for me, it's a solid majority of my more-than-two-action cases.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Is my experience out of the mainstream? Maybe not to confirm my numbers, but are you seeing as clear and remarkable a trend as I am?
If this is a real thing, I want to be able to say something about it in the article, and that "it's not just me."
</div><div><br></div><div>Do you have any observations / conjectures about why? If you can send me a couple examples, I won't broadcast serial numbers, but I'd like to have a basis to make a generalized statement, that goes beyond a single person's observation.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Thank you<br></div><div><br></div><br><span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><span><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><span><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div><span><span><span><span><span><p style="margin:0px 0px 10px;color:rgb(102,127,160);font-family:"Open Sans",sans-serif,Arial;font-size:12px"><a border="0" href="https://www.iam-media.com/strategy300/individuals/david-boundy" style="color:rgb(102,127,160);text-decoration:none;outline:medium none;background:transparent none repeat scroll 0px 0px" target="_blank"><img alt="" height="92" width="73" src="https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/mail-sig/AIorK4wRMgBgcdZCqTw68Gg6ihENvW6_y8dGBqYvnJwiaIyu6LO5a7IJ-cljKsueIE5uxXbT6s9MN5hE2lGU"> <br></a></p></span></span></span></span></span><p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;color:rgb(50,49,48);font-weight:normal;text-align:start;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:15px">
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