Examiner Michael Hicks

Appears inactive Last observed office action: July 2016 (119 months ago).

Examiner Michael Hicks appears to be about average relative to their peer examiners. Their lifetime grant ratio is 57.0%, they average 2.84 office actions per granted patent, and their rejection profile is dominated by §103.

Difficulty vs AU About Average

Difficulty vs Group Very Hard

Difficulty vs TC About Average

Difficulty vs USPTO About Average

Average OA / Grant 2.84

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Examiner Details

Observed Examiner Years: 9 years (2008-2016)
Tech Center: 2100 - Computer Architecture Software and Information Security
Group: 2160 - Databases and File Management

Metrics

Applications Evaluated: 335
Granted Applications: 191
Non-Granted Applications: 144
Avg OA / Grant: 2.84
Last OA Observed: July 2016 (119 months ago)
Art Units Seen: 2165
Work Groups Seen: 2160 - Databases and File Management

Context Comparison

Scope	Examiners	Lifetime Grant Ratio	Avg OA / Grant
This Examiner	1	57.0%	2.84
Art Unit	30	56.2%	2.59
Group	193	61.2%	2.52
Tech Center	1,706	55.9%	2.19
USPTO	16,116	54.8%	1.98

Grant Timeline

Shaded region marks the last two observed years, where grant outcomes may lag due to recency.

Year	Applications	Granted	Grant Rate
No observed data before 2008; examiner may not yet have been active in the available dataset.
2008	27	16	59.3%
2009	46	23	50.0%
2010	46	31	67.4%
2011	29	21	72.4%
2012	33	16	48.5%
2013	48	28	58.3%
2014	45	25	55.6%
2015	40	18	45.0%
2016	21	13	61.9%
No observed data after 2016; examiner may have gone inactive or moved out of examining work.

191 family-cache-validated grants; 0 OA-only grant signals.

Rejection Timeline

OA #	Office Actions	§ 101 Percentage	§ 102 Percentage	§ 103 Percentage	§ 112 Percentage
1	335	0.9%	46.3%	47.5%	0.6%
2	249	2.0%	36.9%	57.0%	2.0%
3	167	0.0%	32.3%	62.9%	0.6%
4	120	0.0%	31.7%	64.2%	1.7%
5	59	0.0%	15.3%	81.4%	0.0%
6	38	0.0%	13.2%	81.6%	0.0%
7	22	0.0%	22.7%	77.3%	0.0%
8	14	0.0%	21.4%	78.6%	0.0%
9	5	0.0%	0.0%	100.0%	0.0%
10	4	0.0%	0.0%	100.0%	0.0%

§ 101 Yearly Trend

2014: Alice

3.0%

2008

0.9%

2009

1.6%

2010

2.2%

2011

0.0%

2012

0.0%

2013

0.0%

2014

0.0%

2015

0.0%

2016

Each bar shows the share of this examiner's observed office actions in that year that included a § 101 rejection.