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Examiner Gregory Aaron Kessler

TECH CENTER 2100 · 3 ART UNITS · 1,048 DECIDED APPLICATIONS · LAST ACTION AUG 2026
ALLOWANCE RATE = SHARE OF DECIDED APPLICATIONS (ALLOWED + ABANDONED); PENDING EXCLUDED
OVERALL ALLOWANCE RATE · POOLED ACROSS 3 ART UNITS
90%vs 73% weighted peer average+17 pts

Examiner Gregory Aaron Kessler has allowed 939 of 1,048 decided applications in Computer Architecture, Software, and Information Security.

939 allowed
Plus 47 applications still pending — not yet decided, so excluded from the rate.
The weighted peer average (73%) is each art unit's average below, weighted by this examiner's applications in it (3 art units).
DATA UPDATED AUGUST 27, 2026
AU 2196 · 89%AU 2197 · 96%AU 2195 · 53%
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Outcomes over timemonths since first office action

grantedpendingabandoned
granted 80%abandoned 9%0%50%100%048mo36momonths since first office action
↳ move your cursor across the chart to read any month

Within 36 months of the first office action, 79.98% of Examiner Gregory Aaron Kessler's applications had been granted and 8.77% had been abandoned. This counts each application from its own first office action, so it covers a different population than the overall allowance rate above, which is measured across decided applications only.

Office actions per allowanceexaminer ● vs weighted peer average ○

Mailed office actions per allowed application
2.02
1.28

Counts mailed office actions on the merits — non-final and final — over this examiner's 939 allowed applications. A first-action allowance counts as zero, and a notice of allowance is not an office action.

The weighted peer average (2.02) blends the per-art-unit averages, weighted by this examiner's allowed applications in each: 2196 (1.87), 2197 (2.38), 2195 (1.93). Each art-unit figure is the unweighted mean of the individual examiner values in that art unit — the peer-typical figure, not the art unit's own ratio.

What the data says.reading this examiner

Gregory Aaron Kessler maintains a pooled allowance rate of 90% across more than a thousand decided applications in Technology Center 2100 (Computer Architecture, Software, and Information Security). His record spans three art units. The allowance rate—the percentage of applications that received a final allowance among all decided (allowed and abandoned) applications—reflects his overall disposition across these units. Allowance rates vary among the art units in his record, ranging from 53% to 96%. This range reflects the different subject matter and prosecution patterns within each art unit.

Reading a pooled record.

This pooled record aggregates Kessler's work across multiple art units in TC 2100. The overall 90% allowance rate describes his historical performance as a combined figure and is not predictive of any individual application's outcome. A pooled rate obscures variation between art units; the range of 53% to 96% shows that outcomes differ by art unit. Pooled statistics describe past record only and do not account for application-specific factors, amendments, or claims.

These are aggregate statistics from this examiner's past public record — not predictions about any specific application. The per-art-unit figures below show how the record varies across art units. Our approach to patent prosecution →

Appeals, stage by stagepre-appeal conference, then the Board

STAGE 1 · CONFERENCE1179REQUESTSn = 9counts only
7 of 9 proceed
+ 24 never asked
STAGE 2 · APPEAL64%9%21%33APPEALSn = 33rates shown
STAGE 1 · CONFERENCE OUTCOME · n = 9
  1. Proceeded to appeal7
  2. Allowed at conference1
  3. Prosecution reopened1
STAGE 2 · APPEAL OUTCOME · n = 33
  1. Allowed2164%
  2. Affirmed721%
  3. Reversed39%
  4. Abandoned13%
  5. Pending13%

Appeal outcomes are counted from USPTO transaction records. Where an examiner has few appeals on record, these figures describe what happened in those cases and should not be read as a rate.

Rates are not shown below 20 cases, because a single case would move the figure by more than five percentage points.

Categories report what happened to the appeal, not the application's final fate — most appeals resolve without a Board decision, and an application whose rejection the Board affirmed can still be granted afterward.

HOW TO READ THESE NUMBERS

Past outcomes, not predictions — identity, attribution, and coverage limits on every figure on this page. Expand for the full list.

These figures describe outcomes already on the public record. They do not predict the outcome of any application and are not legal advice.

Reassigned applications. The USPTO publishes only the examiner currently assigned to an application. Where an application has changed examiners, its entire history — including office actions issued by a predecessor — is attributed here to the current examiner.

Examiner identity. The USPTO publishes no stable examiner identifier. Identity on this site is derived from the examiner's published name together with the art unit. An examiner's record is pooled across the art units they worked in within a technology center. An examiner who has worked in more than one technology center appears here more than once, with their record split between those pages. Two examiners who share a name within a single art unit may be combined into one record.

Comparing across technology centers. Rejection-ground rates (§101, §102, §103, §112) track the subject matter a technology center examines, not examiner severity. Technology Center 2100's rates are comparable with other art units inside TC 2100 and are not comparable with rates from a different technology center.

Comparing examiners. An examiner's rates are shown here against the average for their art unit, which is the closest available comparison because art units group related subject matter. Comparisons get less reliable the further you move from that — between art units, and especially between technology centers, differences in subject matter, applicant population, and prior art make raw rate comparisons misleading. Where an examiner has few applications on record, small changes in the underlying data move the percentages a great deal.

Applications not counted. An application whose currently assigned examiner has moved to a USPTO business unit outside the examining technology centers is absent from this record, together with every office action on it — even where those actions issued while the application sat in an art unit shown here.

Coverage is incomplete. This site does not include every patent application. Applications that may not appear here include those examined in technology centers not listed on this site; those that moved elsewhere within the Office, such as to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board on appeal, to central reexamination, to the Office of Petitions, or to design or plant examination; those never published, including applications filed with a nonpublication request and those abandoned before publication; provisional applications, which are not examined on the merits; anything filed or acted on after the refresh date above; and individual applications or office actions that the USPTO's public services did not return when we retrieved them. That list is illustrative, not exhaustive.

Counts may be low. The individual outcomes described here are matters of public record. The counts and rates computed from them are ours, and they are incomplete. Because of those gaps a count here may be lower than the true figure. We cannot state the size of the difference, and it is not uniform — one examiner's page may be close to complete while another's is materially short. Rates are computed from these same counts, so the uncertainty sits in both the numerator and the denominator. Do not treat a figure here as a count of record; verify against Patent Center, PatentsView, or the Patent Examination Data System before relying on it.

An absent figure. Where a figure is absent, we did not retrieve the underlying records. It does not mean the value is zero, and it does not mean the USPTO holds no such records.

Rejection-ground retrieval. Office-action rejection records are retrieved from the USPTO's office-action dataset in date-bounded batches sized so that each is returned whole in a single response. Retrieved this way, repeated pulls return the same set of records — the retrieval is reproducible. That is a property of our retrieval, not a guarantee that the USPTO dataset itself is complete; the coverage caveats above apply to these figures as to every other.

Compiled from USPTO records as published on August 27, 2026. Prosecution continues after that date and is not reflected here.

The record, art unit by art unit.3 art units

Each section benchmarks this examiner against that art unit's average. Figures are this examiner's own public record within the art unit; the overall rate above pools them.

◈ PRIMARY · ART UNIT 2196
733 APPS · 89% ALLOWANCE

Primarily examines program control and execution.

Allowance ratewhere this examiner sits among peers

89%
higher than about 61% of the 33 examiners with published rates in art unit 2196
AU avg 74%
0%
100%
Each short mark is one of the 33 examiners with published rates in art unit 2196; the dot is this examiner. The tick is the art-unit average, computed across all 39 examiners in the unit — a broader group than the 33 published marks, so it can sit apart from them.

Disposition733 decided applications

649 allowed
No applications pending.

Pendencymonths from filing

filed
first action 20.3mo
disposed 32.2mo
0
36mo
Art-unit average: first action 26.7 mo, disposed 41.8 mo.

Rejection groundsexaminer ● vs art-unit average ○

REJECTION RATE = SHARE OF THIS EXAMINER'S APPLICATIONS THAT DREW ≥1 OFFICE-ACTION REJECTION IN WHICH THE GROUND APPEARS

Grounds can co-occur, so the four don't sum to 100%. The art-unit figure is the unweighted mean across examiners in the art unit; where an art unit has no computed average for a ground, that row says so rather than showing a comparison.

§101 — Subject-matter eligibility
47%
39%
§102 — Anticipation (novelty)
59%
51%
§103 — Obviousness
87%
68%
§112 — Written description & definiteness
52%
20%

Interview benefit

Allowance rate for applications with an examiner interview versus without one.

without
88%
+6 pts
with
94%

A correlation, not proof that interviews cause allowances. Based on 84 decided applications with an interview and 649 without.

ART UNIT 2197
332 APPS · 96% ALLOWANCE

Primarily examines program control and execution, and software engineering.

Allowance ratewhere this examiner sits among peers

96%
higher than about 88% of the 33 examiners with published rates in art unit 2197
AU avg 70%
0%
100%
Each short mark is one of the 33 examiners with published rates in art unit 2197; the dot is this examiner. The tick is the art-unit average, computed across all 41 examiners in the unit — a broader group than the 33 published marks, so it can sit apart from them.

Disposition285 decided applications

274 allowed
Plus 47 applications still pending — not yet decided, so excluded from the rate.

Pendencymonths from filing

filed
first action 26.2mo
disposed 39.6mo
0
48mo
Art-unit average: first action 26.1 mo, disposed 44.2 mo.

Rejection groundsexaminer ● vs art-unit average ○

REJECTION RATE = SHARE OF THIS EXAMINER'S APPLICATIONS THAT DREW ≥1 OFFICE-ACTION REJECTION IN WHICH THE GROUND APPEARS

Grounds can co-occur, so the four don't sum to 100%. The art-unit figure is the unweighted mean across examiners in the art unit; where an art unit has no computed average for a ground, that row says so rather than showing a comparison.

§101 — Subject-matter eligibility
54%
56%
§102 — Anticipation (novelty)
58%
53%
§103 — Obviousness
90%
64%
§112 — Written description & definiteness
50%
16%

Interview benefit

Allowance rate for applications with an examiner interview versus without one.

without
96%
±0 pts
with
96%

A correlation, not proof that interviews cause allowances. Based on 47 decided applications with an interview and 238 without.

ART UNIT 2195
30 APPS · 53% ALLOWANCE · LIMITED DATA

Primarily examines program control and execution.

Allowance ratewhere this examiner sits among peers

53%
higher than about 11% of the 44 examiners with published rates in art unit 2195
AU avg 73%
0%
100%
Each short mark is one of the 44 examiners with published rates in art unit 2195; the dot is this examiner. The tick is the art-unit average, computed across all 48 examiners in the unit — a broader group than the 44 published marks, so it can sit apart from them.

Disposition30 decided applications

16 allowed
14 abandoned
No applications pending.

Pendencymonths from filing

filed
first action 49.5mo
disposed 59.7mo
0
60mo
Art-unit average: first action 33.1 mo, disposed 48.3 mo.

Rejection grounds

No rejection records for this examiner were retrieved from the USPTO office-action dataset. This is an absence of retrieved data, not a rate of zero.

// FAQ

Questions about Examiner Gregory Aaron Kessler

  • What is Gregory Aaron Kessler's overall allowance rate?
    His pooled allowance rate is 90% across more than a thousand decided applications in Technology Center 2100 (Computer Architecture, Software, and Information Security).
  • How many art units does Kessler cover?
    His record spans three art units within TC 2100: art units 2195, 2196, and 2197.
  • Does the allowance rate vary by art unit?
    Yes. Allowance rates across his art units range from 53% to 96%, indicating variation in outcomes by art unit. The pooled 90% figure is an aggregate and does not reflect any single art unit's rate.
  • What does this pooled allowance rate mean for my application?
    This pooled figure describes Kessler's historical record and is not a prediction of any specific application's outcome. Allowance depends on claim scope, prior art, amendments, and arguments unique to each application.
◈ HOW LYNCH LLP CAN HELP

Where to go next.

Lynch LLP represents applicants in patent prosecution before the USPTO. These are general resources about the firm's services — not advice about this examiner or any specific application.

Patent prosecution at Lynch LLPApplication drafting, office-action responses, and prosecution strategy before the USPTO.Work before the Patent Trial and Appeal BoardAppeals, inter partes review, and patent-owner defense before the PTAB.Planning a patent portfolio over timeHow a patent portfolio is sequenced and built over a multi-year horizon.The firm's consultation optionsFree and paid consultation options across the firm's attorneys.
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METHODOLOGY & DISCLOSURES

Methodology. This page pools every art unit in which Examiner Gregory Aaron Kessler has a public record within Technology Center 2100. Statistics are computed from publicly available USPTO records, refreshed on a recurring schedule. This page's data was last updated August 27, 2026. The overall allowance rate is total allowed divided by total decided applications (allowed plus abandoned) across all art units — not an average of the per-art-unit rates; pending applications are excluded. Figures are rounded for display. Pooled sample: 1,095 applications.

Rejection rates. Each §-rate is the share of this examiner's applications that drew at least one office-action rejection in which that statutory ground appears; applications with no rejection on record are excluded, and because grounds can co-occur the four do not sum to 100%. The art-unit figure beside each is the unweighted mean of the per-examiner rates across the art unit, published for §101 and §103 only. Beside the overall allowance rate we show a benchmark: for a single-art-unit examiner it is exactly that art unit's average, labeled “art-unit average”; for an examiner spanning several art units it is the “weighted peer average” — the per-art-unit averages, weighted by this examiner's application count in each — labeled distinctly because it is a blended figure, not any single art unit's average. Both are built from the same per-art-unit averages the panels show.

Office actions per allowance. Mailed office actions on the merits — non-final and final — averaged over this examiner's allowed applications. A first-action allowance counts as zero and is included; a notice of allowance is not an office action. The comparison figure is built the same way as the allowance-rate benchmark — from each art unit's own average for this measure — weighted here by this examiner's allowed applications in each art unit, since that is this measure's own denominator. Each art unit's figure is the unweighted mean of its examiners' individual values, so it is the peer-typical figure rather than the art unit's own ratio.

Lynch LLP is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Examiner statistics are derived from publicly available USPTO data.

These statistics describe past examiner behavior and do not predict the outcome of any particular application. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. Where this page compares an examiner's allowance rate to an art-unit average, that comparison is a factual description of the public record, not a characterization of any individual examiner's conduct or competence.

This page is for general informational purposes and is not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is formed by viewing it. Consult a registered patent practitioner about your own matter. These figures are reproduced and recombined by Lynch LLP from the USPTO's Patent File Wrapper bulk archive and Open Data Portal APIs; they are not an official USPTO publication, and the USPTO has not reviewed, endorsed, or verified them. If a page here is wrong, tell us at lynchllp.com/contact and we will correct or remove it. Full disclaimers →

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