Apologies upfront to those with more legal expertise than myself...but for what it may be worth this is my take on the reexams.

If one goes to the 26 page OA filing, posted under the reexam for ..148 and then goes to pages 4 ,5 and 6 and reads what the examiner has to say there I think we may get a better understanding of what has transpired.

He notes in there, on pages 4 and 5 mostly, that our filing of 5/27/08,,,our Information Disclosure Statement, ,,,the WE, the company make numerous references to COURT proceedings and other REEXAM documents that are dated after the filing of our patent and therefore he cannot use them in his referenced review.

However he does state on the bottom of page 5 and and on page 6 that he can use the information to the...

"degree to which the party filing the information citation has explained the content and relevance of the information"(MPEP2256)

and that

" the examiner will consider the documents in the same manner as other documents in the office search files are considered by the examiner while conducting the search of the prior art in a proper field of search"

So what does all that mean to me?

It looks like....I M O,,,,that when we filed our IDS on the 27th of May there was COURT info and other REEXAM info that was notusable by him to the extent we wanted to use it because of the prior date ..but since we made a note of it he could then use it in a normal search.

Now was there other patents in our IDS attachemnts,which are are not viewable in some cases, that he HAD to now investigate because us of noting them. Were they supplied by us because we are required to submit any and all information that we know of regarding possible prior art?

Did something we submitted refer to the J cases that may have been our hangup in the trial so we would rather it be reviewed by the PTO rather than submitted as a evidenciary exhibit in court? Which in turn may expain why we opted not to settle the case right now till the PTO handles that bit of info and may in turn explain why Judge Ward is still invovled...maybe?

Addf to that when examinign the reexam on the 336 patent there is IDS filing for that case that I can find on the 27th or right near there...but.. a non final action was issued there too....both of which, the 148 and 336 had issued right after the litigation search was completed.

Rememberr too that these two examiners are in the same GAU, albeit with different supervisors, they are closely invovled with each other since the reexams are on related patents too.

So all in all I believe that the IDS we filed, as the examiner noted had info that didn;t help us in certain instances but did allow him to use to do futher investigation on prior art....whether we think that prior art is relevant to our patents or not ....that's where he was led...plus...the litigation search on the 336 patent noted the Kubiachi patent which led to the Fujigaya patent since they were in the same family/

Personally i am hoping that there was something we had ot put in our IDS that was specific to the J's ot the T's that will be reviewed by the PTO along with our attorneys and Moore and when all is said and done our patents will come out stronger with no more lingering possibilites of prior art and then we may even see the T's and maybe even the J's have a final ending to all these court proceedings.

Like I've said that's my take for what its worth but I firmly believe these examiners are working very closely together, exchanging info that may effect either rpatent and they are not on an excursion into throwng wild darts at our patents looking for more and more problem areas in order to overturn or hold up our reexam certificates.

In the long run this may have been the best for us and we may have just known all along this was coming(new OA''s) which has slowed up or licenisng for a while and would also explain RG's comment on these things taking months and years to complete.

JMHO