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Status 32

As has been noted on Patently-O and also in comments here, the Office has flagged all pending applications which do not comply with the new 5/25 claim limits [and put into status 32].

They were removed today from examiner's dockets so that notices to that effect could be sent to the applicants.

From what I've been told, once an application has been amended to comply with the claim limit requirements, it will be returned to the same examiner's docket from which it was removed.

For all the talk that the Office should have waited until November 1st to do this, I doubt that it really makes a whole lot of difference. Does anyone think that there would have been a whole lot of examiners writing actions on these applications over the next two weeks, when they could simply put those applications on the shelf, work on amendments for a couple of weeks and end up with fewer claims to examine?

I understand how sleazy that sounds, but under the production system, I doubt that there are many examiners looking for extra work to do, and that's exactly what it would amount to.

Full post as published by Just a Patent Examiner on October 16, 2007 (boomark / email).