Really, if you wantto improve quality, the first thing that needs to be done (at least by the examiner – I won’t omment on things that applicant can do to help out) is:

make sure that the best and most relevant prior art gets in the case at the earliest time, idealy the 1st action.

If the best art is in the case at the start the rejections are easier to write & applicant can (hopefully) review the applied and cited prior art and amend the claims to overcome all of that art. Then the next action should be an allowance if there is anything allowable in the case.

Of course that is the idea situation on both sides.

How to get the best art? Simple.

1) The examiner must learn the art (the heavy use of text searching has killed this skill).

2) Understand the invention (NOT just the claim language) before starting the search.

3) Learn how to search properly.

3a) This means leanring what subclasses should be searched & what art can be found where.

3b) Learn how to do a proper text search. Too many examiner think that they can do a google-like search & find the prior art. Problem is, google supplies the synonyms and proximity (to an extent) behind-the-scenes. You put in a bunch of words & it will combine them, use synonyms, sort by relevance, etc. Does all the work for you. EAST requires you to actually think before putting the words in if you want to get meaningful results.

All too many examiners take words from the claims, plug them into EAST & take somethhing that has all the right words. And all too often the art is not the best and sometimes not even relevant.

Of course, if they knew the art & understood the invention, that would be obvious to them.

Fix those problems & the quality will be much better. If there is good art in the rejection, even if not well explained, the applicant can often understand the reasons for the rejection and get something accomplished (NOT ideal, but better than how it is now). If there is not good art in the rejection it doesn’t matter if it is explained well or not. It is still wrong.