Generating OA response shells and other documents/emails 

This feature allows you to generate Office Action responses and other shell documents based on the pre-configured shell templates, which can be either Word documents (.docx) or Word templates (.dotx) containing specific text replacement fields. ClaimMaster can populate these replacement fields in the document with the information downloaded from the USPTO/EPO, claims from the previous Office Action response, or rejections identified in the Office Action.




Getting Started

Depending on whether you want to include Office Action information into the shell or not, you can invoke the shell generation tool in two ways:

  • If you want to include Office Action info (i.e., rejections, objections, etc.) in the shell, then you will need to analyze the Office Action first.  To do so, click on the USPTO Office Actions, Shells, and Forms menu, then select Analyze Office Actions and Generate Shell Documents, then select Analyze Office Action + Generate Shells.  Once you complete OA analysis, switch to the Generate Shell Documents Tab.



  • If you do not need to include Office Action information into the shell, then click on the USPTO Office Actions, Shells, and Forms menu, then select Analyze Office Actions and Generate Shell Documents, then select Generate Shells (without Office Action analysis):



Feature Options

The following main options are used for shell generation:


 


    1. Enter the application or patent number in this field.  You can also select a value from all of the entries loaded in the biblio cache using a pull-down menu.
    2. Press this button to download bibliographic information for the specified application number (item #1) from the USPTO's Patent Center (automatic) or Patent Center (manual scraping/import)
    3. Press this button to open the page for the specified application number at Patent Center using your default browser.
    4. If this checkbox is selected, ClaimMaster will proceed to download the bibliographic data directly from Patent Center rather than loading it from biblio cache.  The newly downloaded bibliographic data for this application will then be stored in biblio cache.  
    5. Lists the date of the Office Action (used in filling out the shells and for computing various replacement fields).  
    6. You can have ClaimMaster get the latest iteration of claims from the open Word document or another Word document (e.g., previous OA response) - see item 6 to specify location.
    7. Use this field to specify the location of the document with the latest claim set you want to insert into the Office Action response.  
    8. If this checkbox is selected,  ClaimMaster will update the status indicators in the claims inserted in the Office Action response, such as from (Currently Amended) to (Previously Presented), etc.  In addition, amendments in the claims will be accepted as well. The placeholder for this item in the templates is [CLAIMS]
    9. If this checkbox is selected, ClaimMaster will capitalize 1st letters within status indicators (e.g., "Currently Amended", "Previously Presented", etc.)
    10. Specifies whether to insert the claims from another document into the shell document with their original font/formatting or whether to use the destination formatting specified in the shell (i.e., using formatting of the [CLAIMS] replacement field).
    11. Select a previously defined group of documents/shells to generate.
    12. Here you can select multiple documents to define a group, enter group name and then click on "Save" to store the group for future use.  Alternatively, clicking on the "Delete" button will remove the given group.
    13. This table shows a list of all available shells.  Click on a particular row in the table to select the shell for further processing.  You can select multiple shells either by dragging your mouse across the selection or using Ctlr + mouse click to select multiple forms simultaneously.  
      1. Select the first "CURRENTLY OPEN WORD DOCUMENT" entry to fill out the fields in the currently open Word document.  This document does not have to be configured as the shell and be in .dotx format.  Any Word document containing ClaimMaster replacement fields will be filled out with information for the fields.
      2. If you select multiple shells/documents to fill with bibliographic data, a valid Save directory (item 6) is required and all generated documents will be saved there once they are filled out.
    1. Configures shell settings.
    2. Click this button to fill-in the selected shell template(s) with information.  Any placeholder fields in the Word or email shell(s) will be replaced with bibliographic data, claims, rejections, etc., if available.  Any automatic fields in the templates (e.g., page #s of different sections) will be updated at the end of the document creation.
    1. Switch to the Save Settings tab to specify save options


      1. These fields allow you to specify additional items to include with the generated shells to create an Office Action "package".  They can include: (1) an annotated and OCRed Office Action, (2) cited prior art, and (3) a document with a clean claim set.  You can also select to zip all generated documents together.

Note: if you select any of these documents, a valid Save location (item 6) is required and all generated documents will be saved there.

      1. Specifies whether all the generated documents will be placed inside a separate zip file.
      2. Specifies a save location for the generated documents.


In addition, if you switch to the Available Replacement Data for Shells tab, you'll have access to the following options: 




      1. Shows various bibliographic replacement fields in this table will be filled in when "lookup biblio data" button (item #2) is clicked. These fields will be used to fill-out the OA shells.
      2. Here you can specify whether to capitalize inventor/examiner/applicant names and title in the replacement fields. You can choose to keep the original capitalization, initialize first letters in each word, or capitalize all words.
      3. Use these buttons to edit, delete, or add new fields to the table above.
      4. Click this button to configure/edit custom replacement fields.
      5. These tabs show textual summaries of the rejections/objections/allowances in the Office Action (original, re-regenerated, GPT). For more information on these fields, see item 10 in Analyzing Office Action section.