Patent Office Actions
How well it reads an Office action
The record reader against public USPTO file histories: the rejections each Office action states, the references each applies, and the reasons a Notice of Allowance gives, scored against the same papers read by hand.
Read this first
This is a small study: 2 file histories. Both applications are public and named below so you can check them. Nothing on this page is a recommendation about any application, and none of it is a legal determination: what a record means for a particular matter is the practitioner's reading.
Reading an Office action: a first check on two file histories
The tool reads a Patent Center "download all documents" file, scanned pages included, and reports each rejection an Office action states and the reasons a Notice of Allowance gives, with the quotation each came from. We scored that reading against the record, read by hand, on the file histories of 18/541,216 and 19/180,870: their Office actions and their Notice of Allowance. One rejection is one of the examiner's own headings: a ground, the claims it covers and the references it applies, as the Office action groups them.
| Model | Run | Rejections found | References found | References named that the paper does not contain | Other citations listed as references | Examiner's stated reasons found |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Claude Sonnet 5.5 | remote | 10 of 10 | 13 of 13 | 0 | 0 | 2 of 2 |
kimi-k2.5 | remote | 10 of 10 | 13 of 13 | 0 | 0 | 2 of 2 |
qwen3.5:9b | on a laptop | 10 of 10 | 12 of 13 | 0 | 0 | 2 of 2 |
qwen3.5:9b | through OpenRouter | 9 of 10 | 13 of 13 | 0 | 3 | did not finish |
A 9-billion-parameter model running on a laptop found every rejection, which is the configuration that keeps a file on the machine. The same model reached through OpenRouter did worse on this run and some of its calls ran to the time limit: a result for that route rather than for the model, since OpenRouter chooses the host and hosts differ in how they serve it.
No model named a reference the paper does not contain, so the tool's own check, which
withholds any reference it cannot find in the paper, had nothing to withhold.
The qwen3.5:9b run through OpenRouter listed 3 citations that are not
references of record, a statute and a court decision among them; they are in the paper, so
that check passed them, and the tool now withholds statutes and case law as a separate step,
a change made because of this run.
Scored against the record as read by hand; a licensed practitioner's check of that reading is under way, and this table will change if it does. One entry is open: the Final Rejection in the second file states its obviousness rejection over two references, then applies a third to later claims, and the hand reading lists all three. Read as two, the local model's one missed reference disappears; the rejection counts are the same either way. The last column counts the reasons a Notice of Allowance states, where it states them; the reasons for allowance are not always written out.
What this does not measure: how much time the reading saves, how it does on a file whose scans are poor, or how it does across the range of art units and Office action styles. Two files is a first check, not a survey. One of the readings is printed unedited, quotations and all.
Two more measurements, about continuations
The same study measured two things about drafting continuations from these records: what real continuations left out of their parents' allowed claims, split by whether a limitation was filed with the application or added during prosecution, and where the tool looks when it proposes drafting directions, including a finding against the tool. Both are published with their method on patentcontinuation.com, where the drafting side of the app is described.