We have significantly redesigned our Office Action analysis and shell generation tools for +Shells subscribers. The new tools are easier to use, extract more useful information from Office Actions, and let you generate filled-out shell documents enriched with bibliographic data pulled from Patent Center and Private PAIR, Office Action information, and claims. We’ve also made it even easier to convert your existing Office Action responses into new re-usable ClaimMaster shell templates.
Office Action Analysis Tool Improvements
The re-designed Office Action Analysis tool make it very easy to quickly review and analyze the contents of Office Actions from the USPTO:
- Improved user interface – by default, Office Action analysis tool now opens in Word’s task pane, making it easier to navigate, analyze, and review the contents of the Office Action directly in Word.
- Improved PDF handling – while Office Actions in DOCX format are still preferred, we can now open OA PDFs directly inside Word, which comes with a pretty good OCR and layout engine in recent versions
- Improved accuracy – we’ve re-trained on thousands of published OA documents. We’ve also improved the the ability to add/remove/edit existing and new rejections to the ones that are automatically identified in the OA.
- Re-use original OA contents – we can now extract and re-use the original text of the rejections/objections/allowances from the OA document, allowing you to reuse the same portions in your shells (with additional modifications, if needed)
- Enhanced OA text summaries – get text of OA summaries in several formats, such as a matrix view of all claims, original snippets from the OA, regenerated summaries, or summary from OpenAI’s GPT (+Shells version)
- Flexible file names – we now allow custom prior art file names, allowing you to insert application #, customer #, and other fields into the downloaded prior art files.
- OA annotations – highlight rejections and insert hyperlinks to USPTO/EPO prior art directly in the Office Action documents (DOCX).
Shell Generation Improvements
We have also fully revised the shell generation tools, making it much easier to quickly fill-out and generate shell documents enriched with bibliographic data, Office Action contents, and updated claim sets from previous iterations of correspondence with the USPTO.
- Improved user interface – the new tool shows up in Word’s task pane, allowing you to generate shells from open Word documents and also without performing analysis of Office Action first, in case you need some of the simpler shells. You have have simplified access/view of all of the available replacement fields and associated dat.
- Improved data for filling out shells – we’ve significantly improved text summaries and other replacement fields for shell generation. Re-use original language from the OA or use ClaimMaster to generate summaries using fully customizable rules. Apply post-processing modifications to all text to fit your drafting preferences. We’ve also added many more replacement fields to let you customize your shells even further.
- Simplified claim import – we now let you import claim sets into shells from currently open document or other files/PAIR.
- Multi-document shell groups – save preferred shell groups for multi-document shell generation (e.g., shell response + reporting letter + email)
- Flexible file names – you can now specify custom shell and prior art file names, allowing you to insert application #, customer #, and other fields into prior art and shell files.
- More shell examples – we’ve added new sample shells and examples for all available replacement fields.
Click on the links below to read more detailed posts about the other improvements in ClaimMaster 2023.5: