Appeal brief practice alert

The USPTO continues to intensify the hypertechnicality of its interpretation of the existing appeal brief rules.  Today I received a notice that an application on appeal was abandoned, because the appeal brief was noncompliant with regard to two separate points.  The kicker is that I had received a Notice of Non-Compliant Appeal Brief (who doesn’t?), but neither of those points were raised in the Notice.  

Due process issues aside, the USPTO complained that I had not referred to the specification by page and line number in the Summary of Claimed Subject Matter.  This is an application that I filed with paragraph numbers in the specification instead of line numbers, which has been standard practice for some time now.  However, the “gotcha” in MPEP 1205.02(v)  is that the Summary of Claimed Subject Matter “must refer to the specification by page and line number.”  This requirement is contrary to standard practice and adds no value or clarity whatsoever to the appeal process, and serves solely as yet another way for the USPTO to dispose of appeals other than on their merits. 

Nevertheless, in order to prevent the summary rejection of your appeal briefs, make sure that you count your line numbers and use them in your appeal brief.  It doesn’t make any sense, but that’s the way it is.

In fact, forcing the Examiners to count line numbers on pages that are not line-numbered creates more work for them than simply pointing to paragraph numbers.   Perhaps it would be a good idea to line-number the pages of the specification and also paragraph-number the paragraphs, for those who want to make things easier for the Office.