Good Morning!

Well, it's just before 5 AM and I'm off to Dunkins to get my morning coffee before heading into the office. I have homework due for a class this evening and since I'm leaving early to work on it with classmates this afternoon, I need to get in earlier than normal. Not to mention that I took yesterday off.

I took yesterday off because of the then-pending decision regarding GSK v. Dudas. Since I'm a junior and need to have all of my actions signed by my primary, it would have been rather pointless working on a new/amended application yesterday, posting it to be reviewed and then coming in today only to have to go back and scrap and/or change what I had done in view of the outcome of the hearing. (Read: I was pretty confident that the judge would rule in favor of GSK, thus no need to prepare actions in light of rules the office can't enforce).

Today, I'll spend my first hours writing up a Final Rejection for an application I inherited from an examiner that left the office. I spent a few hours on it Tuesday and have my references pulled together already. Applicant amended over the art used by the previous examiner, however, the claims are rejected in view of new art (that I probably would have used the first time around in prosecution, had the case been mine from the beginning). Total time spent on this case for me will equal about 10 hours. At my GS-level I get 12 hours/count, so this isn't too bad. Then again, most Finals I do for my own cases take under 4-5 hours and I will only be able to write-off a whopping 3 hours of non-examining time (other time) for doing work from an inherited case. Over the last 6 months I've worked on 11 inherited cases and this is the FIRST time I didn't have to issue a 2nd non-final rejection, so there's a relief.

Anyway, as to the preliminary injunction being granted, I'm relieved and glad that I can go back to work without having to worry about following stupid, confusing, lengthy, "guidance" flow charts for every single case I work on for the foreseeable future. Although I do think that the patent system needs fixing, I don't think that the Final Rules would have done anything but shift the problems around from one place to another. For example, management claims that the rules would fix the backlog, but in my opinion, all they would have done was move the backlog from the examining core to the Board of Appeals.

Ok, I'm off for now.

ExamineThis