A recent U.S. Patent and Trademark Office policy change is making it more difficult for patent applicants and their attorneys to hold multiple interviews with patent examiners during the application process.
Haynes Boone Partner Jeff Wolfson spoke with Law360 about the importance of examiner interviews, explaining that direct conversations often help resolve misunderstandings more quickly than written correspondence alone.
Read an excerpt below:
"Interviews are great to understand a misunderstanding," Haynes Boone Partner Jeff Wolfson told Law360. "Not in every case, but often, there's a miscommunication because you're dealing in writing."
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Likewise, Haynes Boone's Wolfson said, "the opportunity to get interviews after [the final office action] is essentially gone."
"And worse than being gone, to even have an opportunity to try and get [an interview], pretty much every examiner either says no now, or they say, 'Well, I need an agenda, a meaningful agenda,'" Wolfson added. "And that requires a lot of time and effort to develop the arguments, to put some amendments down if you're willing to make them and feel it's necessary."
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"When you file an RCE, you're now delaying the whole prosecution," Wolfson said.
To read the full Law360 article, click here.
