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Examiner James A Kramer

TECH CENTER 3600 · 4 ART UNITS · 97 DECIDED APPLICATIONS · LAST ACTION NOV 2011
ALLOWANCE RATE = SHARE OF DECIDED APPLICATIONS (ALLOWED + ABANDONED); PENDING EXCLUDED
OVERALL ALLOWANCE RATE · POOLED ACROSS 4 ART UNITS
10%vs 45% weighted peer average−35 pts

Examiner James A Kramer has allowed 10 of 97 decided applications in Transportation, Construction, Electronic Commerce, Agriculture, National Security and License & Review.

87 abandoned
No applications pending.
The weighted peer average (45%) is each art unit's average below, weighted by this examiner's applications in it (4 art units).
DATA UPDATED AUGUST 27, 2026
AU 3627 · 13%AU 3693 · 5%AU 3692 · 9%AU 3621 · 0%
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Outcomes over timemonths since first office action

grantedpendingabandoned
granted 7%abandoned 82%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, 6.59% of Examiner James A Kramer's applications had been granted and 82.42% 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
2.26
2.60

Counts mailed office actions on the merits — non-final and final — over this examiner's 10 allowed applications. A first-action allowance counts as zero, and a notice of allowance is not an office action.

Based on 10 allowed applications — too small a sample to characterize the office-action count reliably; shown for completeness.

The weighted peer average (2.26) blends the per-art-unit averages, weighted by this examiner's allowed applications in each: 3627 (2.14), 3693 (2.67), 3692 (2.79). Art units are not included here if this measure has no published average, or if this examiner has no allowed applications there to weight it by. 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

James A Kramer's public record spans dozens of decided applications across four art units within Technology Center 3600 (Transportation, Construction, Electronic Commerce, Agriculture, National Security and License & Review). His pooled allowance rate is 10%, calculated as a share of allowed and abandoned applications—pending applications are excluded from this figure. The allowance rate range indicated in the public record is 13%, reflecting variation across the individual art units in which he has examined. This overall rate describes his past record across the technology center's subject matter.

Reading a pooled record.

This profile aggregates Kramer's record across multiple art units. The pooled allowance rate describes outcomes across all decided applications in his examined portfolio and reflects past dispositions, not predictions about any specific pending application. Aggregate statistics from different art units provide context about an examiner's historical record. Individual art units may show different rates; those figures appear in a separate section. Pooled data serves as background information only.

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 · CONFERENCE22REQUESTSn = 2counts only
2 of 2 proceed
+ 7 never asked
STAGE 2 · APPEAL31329APPEALSn = 9counts only
STAGE 1 · CONFERENCE OUTCOME · n = 2
  1. Proceeded to appeal2—
STAGE 2 · APPEAL OUTCOME · n = 9
  1. Reversed3—
  2. Affirmed3—
  3. Abandoned2—
  4. Affirmed in part1—

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 3600's rates are comparable with other art units inside TC 3600 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.4 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 3627
63 APPS · 13% ALLOWANCE

Allowance ratewhere this examiner sits among peers

13%
higher than about 8% of the 78 examiners with published rates in art unit 3627
AU avg 51%
0%
100%
Each short mark is one of the 78 examiners with published rates in art unit 3627; the dot is this examiner. The tick is the art-unit average, computed across all 80 examiners in the unit — a broader group than the 78 published marks, so it can sit apart from them.

Disposition63 decided applications

55 abandoned
No applications pending.

Pendencymonths from filing

filed
first action 29mo
disposed 46.6mo
0
48mo
Art-unit average: first action 23.1 mo, disposed 39.4 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.

◈ ART UNIT 3693
19 APPS · 5% ALLOWANCE · LIMITED DATA

Allowance ratewhere this examiner sits among peers

5%
higher than about 16% of the 62 examiners with published rates in art unit 3693
AU avg 36%
0%
100%
Each short mark is one of the 62 examiners with published rates in art unit 3693; the dot is this examiner. The tick is the art-unit average.

Disposition19 decided applications

18 abandoned
No applications pending.

Pendencymonths from filing

filed
first action 33.8mo
disposed 49.8mo
0
60mo
Art-unit average: first action 28.8 mo, disposed 48 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.

◈ ART UNIT 3692
11 APPS · 9% ALLOWANCE · LIMITED DATA

Allowance ratewhere this examiner sits among peers

9%
higher than about 22% of the 67 examiners with published rates in art unit 3692
AU avg 31%
0%
100%
Each short mark is one of the 67 examiners with published rates in art unit 3692; the dot is this examiner. The tick is the art-unit average.

Disposition11 decided applications

10 abandoned
No applications pending.

Pendencymonths from filing

filed
first action 36.6mo
disposed 56.2mo
0
60mo
Art-unit average: first action 28.7 mo, disposed 49 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.

◈ ART UNIT 3621
4 APPS · 0% ALLOWANCE · LIMITED DATA

Allowance ratewhere this examiner sits among peers

0%
higher than about 0% of the 82 examiners with published rates in art unit 3621
AU avg 35%
0%
100%
Each short mark is one of the 82 examiners with published rates in art unit 3621; the dot is this examiner. The tick is the art-unit average.

Disposition4 decided applications

4 abandoned
No applications pending.

Pendencymonths from filing

filed
first action 25.6mo
disposed 45.3mo
0
48mo
Art-unit average: first action 25.2 mo, disposed 47.3 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
74%
0%
§102 — Anticipation (novelty)
58%
33%
§103 — Obviousness
85%
100%
§112 — Written description & definiteness
67%
100%

Based on 4 applications — too small a sample to characterize the rejection mix reliably; shown for completeness.

// FAQ

Questions about Examiner James A Kramer

  • What is Examiner Kramer's overall allowance rate?
    His pooled allowance rate is 10% across dozens of decided applications, meaning 10% of his decided applications (allowed plus abandoned) resulted in allowance. This is a historical aggregate and is not a prediction of any specific application.
  • How many art units has Kramer examined in?
    Kramer has examined applications across four art units within TC 3600. The public record includes per-art-unit detail separately; the pooled figure described here aggregates all four.
  • What subject matter does this record cover?
    Kramer's record covers Technology Center 3600 (Transportation, Construction, Electronic Commerce, Agriculture, National Security and License & Review).
  • Does the allowance rate predict my application's outcome?
    No. Historical allowance rates describe an examiner's past record and are correlational data. They are not predictions of any specific pending application's outcome.
◈ 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 LLP →Application drafting, office-action responses, and prosecution strategy before the USPTO.Work before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board →Appeals, inter partes review, and patent-owner defense before the PTAB.Planning a patent portfolio over time →How a patent portfolio is sequenced and built over a multi-year horizon.The firm's consultation options →Free 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 James A Kramer has a public record within Technology Center 3600. 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: 97 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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