| TL;DR: We pulled Tesla’s 100 most recently granted US patents from Google Patents and looked up every examiner behind them using the Examiner Analysis tool by Triangle IP. Across 111 examiner assignments and 102 unique examiners, allowance rates ranged from 21.5% to 100% on the same applicant. The one variable that resulted in such a difference is the examiner. We break down the patterns, and knowing them changes how you prosecute. |
Tesla files thousands of patents every year. But behind every granted patent is one person at the USPTO who decided whether it was worth approving: the examiner.
And understanding examiner patterns directly influences patent allowance. To understand why this analysis matters, we first did it for Apple. We pulled Apple’s 100 most recently granted patents, looked up every examiner behind them, and found patterns that most IP teams never see. So we ran the same playbook for Tesla.
Using Google Patents data and the TIP Tool™ Examiner Analysis, we tracked 102 examiners across 100 Tesla patents recently granted. What we found: Tesla’s examiners ranged from a 21.5% to a 100% allowance rate.
Same applicant. Same attorneys. The only variable was who picked up the file. And that variable has a measurable impact on Tesla’s overall performance at the USPTO. Let’s look into Tesla’s actual performance.
Even Tesla Doesn’t Get a Friendly Draw at the USPTO
The general assumption about companies like Tesla is straightforward: they file enough patents. They build enough relationships. They hire the best prosecution counsel. So they get patent grants more easily than other inventors.
Must Read: How to Find a Good Patent Attorney: Strategies That Actually Work
The data says otherwise. The average allowance rate behind Tesla’s 100 patents is 71.8%. The USPTO baseline sits at around 77%. That puts Tesla 5.2 points below the USPTO average.
For context, if your external counsel’s or prosecutor’s allowance rate is 72%, you are matching Tesla. You can evaluate your law firm and even patent attorneys’ performance using Prosecutor Analysis and see if you’re performing better than Tesla.
We found the same thing when we analyzed Apple’s 100 most recently granted patents. Apple, which has been granted more than 30,000 patents over the past five years, drew a cohort average of 75.3%. It is still below the USPTO average, but the difference is small compared to Tesla.
Neither company clears the average. Neither gets a friendlier room. The variable that explains it most clearly is one most applicants never think to check: Examiner Seniority.
Does Examiner Seniority Mean Difficult Prosecution?
The instinct is to assume that a more experienced examiner means a harder examination. More knowledge, higher standards, tougher questions.
We grouped Tesla’s examiner assignments into five experience tiers based on the total number of applications each examiner has handled in their career.
The pattern is clear, and it runs in the direction most applicants don’t expect. The more applications an examiner has handled, the higher the chances of getting the grant.
The correlation between an examiner’s career application count and their allowance rate is +0.51.
| Examiner experience | Avg allowance | Avg grant time |
| Under 250 apps | 60.1% | 2.9 yrs |
| 250–500 | 66.0% | 3.1 yrs |
| 500–1,000 | 70.3% | 3.1 yrs |
| 1,000–2,000 | 79.9% | 2.6 yrs |
| 2,000+ | 91.4% | 2.0 yrs |
An examiner who has handled fewer than 250 applications in their career allows at 60.1% on average and takes 2.9 years to grant. An examiner with more than 2,000 applications behind them allows at 91.4% and gets there in 2.0 years.
That is a 31-point gap in allowance rate and nearly a full year in grant time, driven entirely by experience.
The two examiners at opposite ends of Tesla’s cohort make this concrete. Lyjak Lori has examined over 2,600 applications in her career. She allowed Tesla’s aerodynamics patent with an average of just 0.8 office actions, and granted it in 98 days.
It is the fastest grant in Tesla’s recent patents.
Trinh Thanh Truc, with 967 applications examined, carries a 21.5% allowance rate and 3.1 office actions on average. Tesla’s photovoltaic patent in her hands took 3,072 days over eight years to grant.
It’s the slowest grant in Tesla’s patents. The difference between these two cases is 2,974 days and 2.3 office actions.
Knowing this, you might expect that Tesla benefits when the same examiner shows up more than once. Familiarity should count for something. However, the data has a complicated answer.
| “A junior examiner allows at 60%. A veteran allows at 91%. That 31-point gap has nothing to do with your invention. It comes down to who opens the file.” |
Repeat Examiners Don’t Guarantee Allowance
If the same examiner keeps showing up on your applications, the assumption is that familiarity should help. They know your technology. They’ve seen your claim style. The path is supposed to get smoother.
Tesla’s data tests that assumption directly. The dataset has seven examiners who handled two or more Tesla patents.
| Examiner | Repeated Cases | Experience | Allowance | Pendency (days) |
| Dickson Paul N | 3 | 87 apps | 50.6% | 915 → 368 → 379 |
| Brown Drew J | 3 | 2,073 apps | 91.0% | 965 → 1,016 → 343 |
Dickson Paul N, a junior examiner, handled his first Tesla case, which took 915 days to grant. His next two cases came in at 368 and 379 days. The timeline compressed by more than half.
But his allowance rate never moved. It stayed at 50.6% across all three cases.
Brown Drew J’s data tells a different story. His first two Tesla cases, both filed in mid-2022, took 965 and 1,016 days, respectively. Then his third case arrived, and it was granted in 343 days.
The difference this time was not just familiarity. Brown’s allowance rate sits at 91%, and he averages just 1.0 office action across his career. When an experienced examiner encounters a technology he has seen before, familiarity compounds.
The third case moved faster because everything was already working in Tesla’s favour: the examiner’s experience, his track record, and the repeated subject matter all aligned.
The takeaway: Familiarity compresses timelines regardless of who the examiner is. But it does not fix a low allowance rate. Repeat examiner relationships help most when claim sets are structurally consistent. However, it doesn’t override claim complexity.
| “Familiarity speeds things up. It does not raise your odds of getting a yes.” |
Solo Examiner vs Examiner Pairs – Which Slows Down the Prosecution?
When two examiners are assigned to the same patent, the assumption is that it slows things down. Two people, two opinions, more friction. The reality is more specific than that.
Of Tesla’s 100 recent patents, 20 were examined by two-person teams. The surface-level comparison does show a penalty.
| Examiner setup | Avg prosecution | Avg examiner allowance |
| Solo Examiner | 1,138 days | 75.6% |
| Examiner Pairs | 1,211 days | 65.0% |
| Difference | +73 days | −10.6 pts |
A 73-day average penalty and a 10-point drop in average allowance rate. That looks like the cost of a two-person team. But when you break the 20 team cases into groups by pair quality, the average disappears and what’s underneath is far more interesting.
| Pair type based on allowance | Tesla Cases Handled | Avg prosecution | Avg pair allowance |
| Both lenient (both >80%) | 2 | 940 | 96.0% |
| Both mid (65–80%) | 8 | 997 | 64.0% |
| Mixed (one strict, one lenient) | 6 | 1194 | 68.0% |
| Both strict (both <65%) | 4 | 1798 | 47.0% |
The difference between a both-lenient pair and a both-strict pair is 858 days. That is nearly two and a half years, driven entirely by who is paired together and not by the fact of having two examiners.
The observation is that two lenient examiners in the same room move nearly as fast as a solo examiner on a good day. This points to a consistent pattern in the data: the stricter examiner in any pair sets the floor.
When a team assignment lands on your case, the right move is not to average the two examiners. It is to look up both, separately, and treat the stricter one as the benchmark.
The pair quality finding leads to a deeper question. If two examiners in the same room can produce such different outcomes, what happens when you look at different examiners assigned to the same art unit across separate applications? The answer reveals the most actionable pattern in the entire dataset
Same Art Unit. Completely Different Strategy.
Tesla’s dataset contains 24 art units in which two or more examiners were assigned to separate applications. One of them illustrates the point better than any other: Group Art Unit 2836.
Three different examiners handled Tesla’s power electronics patents in Art Unit 2836. All three were assigned to the same technology category. Their profiles could not be more different.
| Examiner | Allowance rate | Avg OAs | Experience | Examination pattern |
| Barnie Rexford N | 47.2% | 1.2 | 298 applications | Interview-Driven: Relies heavily on NFRs; extremely low written grant rate, but highly responsive to verbal dialogue. |
| Tran Thai H | 76.2% | 1.5 | 482 applications | Procedural Progression: High overall allowance, but expects a traditional, multi-step back-and-forth paper trail. |
| Wells Kenneth B | 88.5% | 1.3 | 2510 applications | High allowance rate that splits into two completely different behavioural tracks based on the first action |
This data shows that a single art unit is not a uniform environment, as different examiners handling the exact same technology can have completely different examination patterns.
While one examiner might respond best to an early phone interview, another may expect a long back-and-forth paperwork process, meaning a single standard approach will not work.
Ultimately, you need to adjust your strategy on day one based on the specific person assigned to your case.
Final Thoughts
Even a company like Tesla, with all its legal muscle and technical expertise, faces a major structural hurdle at the USPTO. It has nothing to do with the quality of their applications; it’s entirely about the luck of the draw and who gets assigned to the case.
These patterns become undeniable after analyzing over 100 examiners. The takeaway is clear: the moment an examiner’s name appears on a case, your prosecution strategy has to account for the examiner’s patterns as well. Waiting until the first office action to adjust is waiting too long.
So, look up the examiner’s allowance rate, office actions, and examination patterns to make informed decisions in your IP strategy.
Disclaimer: The examiner statistics referenced in this article were sourced from the TIP Tool™ by Triangle IP at the time of publication. For the current examiner statistics, visit app.triangleip.com/ea and search the Examiner Statistics tool directly. Patent application data was sourced from the Google Patents Public Dataset on BigQuery. This article is intended for informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How do I Find Out My Patent Examiner’s Allowance Rate and Seniority Before Responding to an Office Action?
You can easily check your examiner’s allowance rate and the number of applications they have handled by looking them up in a patent data platform like the TIP Tool™. This gives you a clear picture of their track record and experience level before you write your response.
2. Can I Steer My Patent Application Away From Tough Art Units Before Filing?
Yes, you can influence which art unit reviews your application by carefully choosing or adjusting the keywords in your claims before filing. The patent office uses these words to automatically sort your application into specific technology categories. By adjusting your phrasing, you can increase your chances of routing away from difficult review groups.
You can use the Group art unit predictor to find out where your patent is likely to land earlier. Using the art unit predictor has more merits, such as suggesting a group of terms to guide patent drafting to a suitable GAU.
