The other day we received a Notice of Allowance in one of our US patent cases. In the Notice, the Examiner provided an Examiner’s Statement of Reasons for Allowance (ESORFA). We did what we usually do in such situations — we reported the Notice to the client, along with a suggestion that the client may wish to consider whether it is comfortable with the ESORFA.
(Yes, yet another six-letter initialism being coined. You saw it here first, folks! You might think it is an acronym but it’s not. See this blog article.)
Often the reporting of the Notice of Allowance is the end of it. The client never offers any comment one way or the other about the ESORFA, we pay the Issue Fee, the patent issues, and no one ever give’s another moment’s thought about the ESORFA.
But in this case I was absolutely delighted when the inventor responding by saying he was not sure what he should be looking for, and wondering how or why he would be uncomfortable. It is always welcome news when an inventor makes the time and the energy to get involved in the details of the patent process, whether it be the drafting of the claims at the outset or a review of ESORFA at the conclusion, or at points in between.
How does one explain to an inventor how to react to an ESORFA? I gave it a try. Continue reading “Examiner’s Statement of Reasons for Allowance – why we care?”