What’s within the Remaining Rejections: Eligibility

by Dennis Crouch

Although there have been some enhancements, preliminary workplace actions repeatedly require a good quantity clean-up and fine-tuning. This course of typically contains rectifying typographical errors and clarifying free declare language. It’s additionally widespread for the examiner to misconstrue points of the invention.  Nonetheless, by the point the ultimate rejection stage is reached, these points are often addressed, and the strains of distinction are extra clearly drawn.  So, for my research right here, I made a decision to look solely at ultimate workplace actions and ask the query of what proportion of those contain eligibility rejections.

The chart above stories the share of ultimate workplace actions that embody an eligibility rejection.  The uppermost (orange dashed) line on the chart represents functions examined by the eCommerce artwork items (particularly the 3620s, 3680s, and 3690s). Notably, in 2023 greater than 90% of the ultimate rejections for the 3690s (finance, banking, insurance coverage) included an eligibility rejection.  The center (gray) line within the chart pertains to non-financial knowledge processing innovations (2120s). The primary focus of 2120s examination has now shifted predominantly to points associated to AI  simulation and modeling. The third and final (double blue) line within the chart represents all functions. This totals line illustrates that round 9% of all ultimate rejections embody an eligibility focus. This is a rise from the two% price in 2012.  Notably, about half of the USPTO artwork items have an eligibility rejection price of round 0%.

One situation with my research right here strategy is the time issue. Nearly all of circumstances that obtain a ultimate rejection are at the least three years faraway from their efficient submitting date, and so newer filings could be doing a greater job.  This research was carried out based mostly on a pattern measurement of 100,000 ultimate rejections and is restricted solely to publicly obtainable information.