For sure the people at the USPTO are underpaid individuals esp. considering the importance and wide ranging effect of their duites there...and can people be influenced by wrongful payments???...sure they can...that can happen anywhere....but it probably won't happen to our reexams...

Remember before any final verdict is handed down by the examiner...there is a conference of at least three people to review the final decision...the examiner , his boss and another USPTO individual not associated with this reexam but with expertise in the field and more than likely someone from the patent owners side to review what is their final verdict before it is published...and that doesn't include ongoing conversations that may be occuring between the examiner and the company while all this is going on...as an example...the claim # 29 on the 784 patent, when most, if not all, of those at TPL and PTSC knew that that claim was under severe pressure to be approved and knew it was doubtful...that shows that there was exchanges going on between the PTO and PTSC/TPL...

Add to that we can appeal anything that the examiner comes up with too...so to think that we may lose our reexam of underhanded means is really pushing it...impossible...no...probabality...1 in a 1000000

In reference to Fogel wanting to move the cases ot Texas so as not to have a dual verdict on a Markman...that is possible also...but there is also the first to file rule which , if I were the other side I would push like crazy to keep those cases in No. Calif...if will be up to Fogel to decide to follow the first to file rule or overturn that generally accepted following and rule that anything in No. Calif. is a duplication of effort...it's his call, but it wouldn't surprise me to see it go either way.