Examiner Rhea Shields

Potentially inactive Last observed office action: October 2025 (5 months ago).

Examiner Rhea Shields appears to be more difficult than most of their art unit, group, tech center, and USPTO peers. Their lifetime grant ratio is 85.8%, they average 1.37 office actions per granted patent, and their rejection profile is dominated by §112 and elevated §112 usage.

Difficulty vs AU Very Hard

Difficulty vs Group Very Hard

Difficulty vs TC Very Hard

Difficulty vs USPTO Very Easy

Average OA / Grant 1.37

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Examiner Details

Observed Examiner Years: 14 years (2012-2025)
Tech Center: 2900 - Designs
Group: 2900-WG - 2900-WG

Metrics

Applications Evaluated: 1,166
Granted Applications: 1,000
Non-Granted Applications: 166
Avg OA / Grant: 1.37
Last OA Observed: October 2025 (5 months ago)
Art Units Seen: 2915
Work Groups Seen: 2900-WG - 2900-WG

Context Comparison

Scope	Examiners	Lifetime Grant Ratio	Avg OA / Grant
This Examiner	1	85.8%	1.37
Art Unit	29	95.1%	1.24
Group	461	95.1%	1.19
Tech Center	486	94.9%	1.20
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 2012; examiner may not yet have been active in the available dataset.
2012	13	13	100.0%
2013	78	77	98.7%
2014	123	119	96.7%
2015	157	156	99.4%
2016	102	92	90.2%
2017	130	91	70.0%
2018	100	69	69.0%
2019	101	77	76.2%
2020	95	83	87.4%
2021	116	97	83.6%
2022	69	56	81.2%
2023	40	38	95.0%
2024	37	31	83.8%
2025	5	1	20.0%
No observed data after 2025; examiner may have gone inactive or moved out of examining work.

1,000 family-cache-validated grants; 0 OA-only grant signals.

Rejection Timeline

OA #	Office Actions	§ 101 Percentage	§ 102 Percentage	§ 103 Percentage	§ 112 Percentage
1	1,166	0.0%	3.2%	2.8%	80.4%
2	408	0.0%	3.7%	5.4%	82.6%
3	28	0.0%	0.0%	10.7%	82.1%
4	6	0.0%	0.0%	33.3%	66.7%
5	1	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	100.0%