In order to have a better understanding of how the USPTO decides petitions against restriction requirements, it is helpful to review a large number of such decisions. However, there is no easy way to find or compile such decisions, other than going through serial numbers one by one on PAIR. Therefore, I filed a FOIA request for a listing of the Serial Numbers of all publicly available applications where a petition was filed by the Applicant against a Restriction Requirement, the Petition filed between January 1, 2014 to July 2, 2015.

Surprisingly, the USPTO provided the requested information on CD-ROM without requiring an appeal. Expect many future posts discussing the ins and outs of restriction practice.