Office Action Summary Received

Submitting to the USPTO Green Technology Pilot Program has been worthwhile. The USPTO issued an Office Action Summary on June 9, 2010. An Office Action Summary is the name for the document where the patent examiner replies to the patent with their comments.

In my experience this is an amazingly quick response to a new patent submittal. The first response from the patent examiner is almost always

this is not patentable because ...

and it is then our job to explain why it is patentable or to refine the claims to something that is patentable.

After plowing through all the patent examiner comments, I am looking forward to explaining to my patent attorney why I think the prior art sited by the patent examiner does not apply to this invention.

Update 2010-09-20: Scientific American (July 2010) reported on the Green Technology program in the article Patent Still Pending. They report that 335 patents qualified to jump to the head of the line. Compared to previous patents I've gotten, this one is proceeding amazingly fast through the process.