Office Action Response Assistant [Lite+Shells and Pro+Shells versions] 

ClaimMaster provides a helpful OA  Response Assistant tool for quickly preparing Office Action responses. The tool allows you to browse and insert OA rejection summaries, predefined boilerplate entries, replacement fields,and claims into the text of the Office Action response draft. Notably, when you generate a shell response using ClaimMaster's shell tool, various information related to the Office Action will be stored with the shell metadata, allowing you to access it from the Office Action response tool.


Getting Started

  • In Word 2007 or later - from the ClaimMaster Ribbon, click on the USPTO Office Actions, Shells, and Forms menu, then select Office Action Response Assistant:


  • In Word 2003 or earlier - this feature is not available in this Word version. 


Feature Options

You will be presented with the following window, that will help you quickly prepare an Office Action response.  In general, the OA Response Assistant has several sections, each under a separate tab:



Click on any of the links below to go to the help for the specific section:


    1. Office Action Summary section
    2. Boilerplate Entries section
    3. Replacement Data section
    4. Claims section 




1.        Office Action Summary section


This tab of the OA Response Assistant lets you review the summary of the Office Action.  OA Response Assistant loads this information from the metadata stored with the shell, if it was prepared using ClaimMaster.



    1. Shows allowances/objections/rejections identified in the OA from which the shell was generated.  If you click on the individual items in the tree, you'll see the summary of the selected allowance/objection/rejection in the preview window.
    2. Press this button to insert the selected text summary of the allowance/objection/rejection into the document. You can also right-click on the selected entry and choose the "paste" menu option to insert the text of the selected item into the document.

       

2.        Boilerplate Entries section

This tab of the OA Response Assistant lets you select from the various available boilerplate entries to insert into the document.  Boilerplate entries can contain various replacement fields that will be populated with data (if available) upon their insertion into the document.



    1. Pressing this button will open  the common boilerplate document storing all boilerplate entries. For more information on configuring boilerplate entries, click here.
    2. Pressing this button reloads boilerplate entries from the common boilerplate document.
    3. You can filter boilerplate entries by their names/types to make it easier to find the relevant entries.
    4. You can filter boilelrplate entries by text appearing in their names to make it easier to find the relevant entries.  To remove all filters, click on the "Clear" button.
    5. This table shows the filtered view of the available boilerplate entries.  Select one and then click on the "Insert Select Item" button to insert the text of the boilerplate into the document.  You can also right-click on the selected entry and choose the "paste" menu option to insert the text of the selected item into the document.
    6. If this checkbox is enabled then the preview of the boilerplate text will be shown with the fields replaced with available bibliographic/OA data (if such data is available).
    7. This text field provides the preview of the text that will be added to the document when the boillerplate entry is added to the document. 
    8. Press this button to insert the selected boilerplate entry into the document.  You can also right-click on the selected entry and choose the "paste" menu option to insert the text of the selected item into the document.

3.        Replacement Data section

This tab of the OA Response Assistant lets you insert various replacement fields into the open OA shell document.



    1. Enter the application or patent number in this field.  You can also select a value from all of the entries loaded in the PAIR cache using a pull-down menu.
    2. Press this button to download bibliographic information for the specified application number (item #1) from PEDS, or Patent Center, or Private PAIR, as specified in item # 1. 
    3. Press this button to set the biblio data source settings, which let you select PEDS, or Patent Center, or Private PAIR as the preferred source.
    4. Press this button to view the download log for the biblio data.
    5. If this checkbox is selected, ClaimMaster will proceed to download the bibliographic data directly from Patent Center, PEDs, or Private PAIR rather than loading it from PAIR cache.  The newly downloaded bibliographic data for this application will then be stored in PAIR cache. 
    6. Various bibliographic replacement fields in this table will be filled in when "lookup biblio data" button (item #2) is clicked. 
    7. 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.
    8. Use these buttons to edit, delete, or add new fields to the table above.
    9. Click this button to configure/edit custom replacement fields.
    10. This text field provides the preview of the text that will be added to the document when the replacement field is added to the OA response. 
    11. Press this button to insert the selected replacement field into the document.  You can also right-click on the selected entry and choose the "paste" menu option to insert the text of the selected item into the document.


4.        Claims section

This tab of the OA Response Assistant lets you easily load and insert claim limitations into the open shell document.



    1. Press this button to load the claims from the currently open Word document into the OA Response Assistant tool.
    2. Press this button to load the claims from another Word document into the OA Response Assistant tool.
    3. If this checkbox is selected, then only independent claims and their limitations will be shown the view.  Otherwise, all claims will be shown.
    4. If this checkbox is selected, limitations will be inserted in the document inside quotes.
    5. The claim tree shows the filtered set of parsed claims, broken up into individual limitations.  You can click on the individual claim limitations to select and insert them into the open document.
    6. This text field provides the preview of the text that will be added to the document when the claim limitation is added to the OA response. 
    7. Press this button to insert the selected claim limitation into the document.  You can also right-click on the selected entry and choose the "paste" menu option to insert the text of the selected item into the document.