ClaimHour

Vertical guide · Updated June 2026

Patent prosecution attorney time tracking: inventor consultation calls, continuation strategy cycles, and PCT national phase coordination records

Patent prosecution practice — USPTO office action responses, continuation and divisional applications, IDS preparation, and PCT national phase coordination with foreign associates — generates three billing-gap sources that make end-of-month reconstruction systematically unreliable: inventor consultation calls embedded in office action response cycles (arriving on the inventor's schedule, not the attorney's docket calendar), continuation and IDS strategy calls outside defined prosecution milestones (concentrated in short decision windows before allowance or finality deadlines), and PCT national phase foreign associate coordination across asynchronous 18–30-month timelines (multi-party email correspondence and callback calls that generate no docketing system prompt). For a solo patent prosecutor handling a 50-application docket at $400–600/hr, the annual billing gap is $38,000–$65,000.

TL;DR

ClaimHour captures every inventor consultation call during office action response cycles, every continuation strategy call outside docketed milestones, and every foreign associate coordination call during PCT national phase — passively, no timer, no audio, no call contents. It builds the contemporaneous billing record that a 50-application prosecution docket requires. $29–$59/mo. No PMS required.

Office action response cycles: inventor consultation calls at 40% reconstruction capture

Every USPTO non-final office action response requires the patent attorney to work through the examiner's rejections with the inventor: explaining the cited prior art references, identifying distinctions the inventor recognizes from their technical knowledge of the field, and deciding whether to argue the rejection, amend the claims, or pursue both. This consultation is not a single scheduled call — it is a series of 3–7 short calls spread over the 3-month response window, arriving when the inventor has time (lunch, commute, evenings), not when the attorney is at their desk with a docket entry open. A 50-application docket with a 65% office action rate generates 32 non-final OA responses per year. Each response involves an average of 5 inventor consultation calls (initial explanation: 30–45 min; technical clarification round 1: 15–25 min; technical clarification round 2: 15–25 min; claim language review: 20–30 min; post-filing confirmation call: 10–15 min) totaling approximately 95–140 minutes of consultation per response.

At 40% reconstruction capture — the rate at which phone calls from an inventor's personal mobile or home phone to the attorney's cell appear in end-of-month time reconstruction — 32 OA responses × 118 minutes average consultation = 62.9 hours of inventor consultation per year, of which 37.7 hours are untracked. At $400–600/hr: $15,080–$22,620/year in unrealized fees from OA inventor calls alone. The undercount is structural, not attentional: the calls happen outside business hours, on mobile devices, with no docket entry open, and reconstruction from memory at month's end captures only the calls the attorney remembers with enough specificity to bill. The calls that happened during a 20-minute drive, or at the end of a call that started as a different matter, fall below the reconstruction threshold.

Restriction requirements — the USPTO's mechanism for dividing an application claiming multiple independent inventions — generate an additional consultation cycle that occurs before any office action response deadline: a call to explain the restriction (20–45 min), a review of the elected claims (15–25 min), and, for commercially important applications, a follow-up call about divisional filing strategy and relative prosecution priority across the divided inventions. For a 50-application docket with a 30% restriction requirement rate (15 restrictions/year): 15 × 85 minutes average restriction consultation = 21.25 hours at 40% capture = 12.75 untracked hours = $5,100–$7,650/year. Total office action response consultation gap for a 50-application docket: $20,180–$30,270/year.

Continuation strategy and IDS preparation: short decision windows outside docketed milestones

A continuation application — whether a continuation proper, a continuation-in-part adding new matter, a divisional pursuing non-elected claims from a restriction, or a request for continued examination (RCE) after final rejection — requires a strategy consultation between the attorney and the inventor or client business stakeholder before the filing deadline. The decision window is compressed: a continuation must be filed before the parent application issues (typically 3 months from notice of allowance if the patent term adjustment is not a factor, with a hard statutory bar at issuance) or, for an RCE, within the response period after a final rejection. These deadlines are docketed as firm due dates, but the strategy consultation that precedes the filing decision is not — it is a phone call that happens when the client reads the notice of allowance email and calls to ask "what does this mean, should we file a continuation?"

A 50-application docket where 40% of applications generate a continuation or RCE decision: 20 continuation strategy calls per year × 32 minutes average = 10.7 hours at 40% capture = 6.4 untracked hours = $2,560–$3,840/year. IDS (Information Disclosure Statement) preparation adds a parallel consultation cycle throughout the prosecution lifecycle. The USPTO's duty to disclose material prior art under 37 C.F.R. § 1.56 requires the attorney to periodically contact the inventor to identify new prior art encountered since the last IDS: competitor product launches, relevant new publications, counterpart foreign application office actions. These IDS review calls (20–40 min each, triggered by the attorney's docket reminder but conducted as informal calls on the inventor's schedule) occur 1–3 times per active application per year. For 50 applications with 1.8 IDS review calls each at 28 minutes average: 42 hours/year at 40% capture = 25.2 untracked hours = $10,080–$15,120/year. Total continuation and IDS billing gap: $12,640–$18,960/year.

Post-allowance prosecution — the period between notice of allowance and issuance — generates a third category of short consultation events: authorization calls for issue fee payment (is the client ready to pay the $1,200–$2,000 issue fee?), calls about including drawings corrections in the issue fee response, calls about whether to file a notice of appeal vs. accepting narrow allowed claims, and calls about maintenance fee strategy. These post-allowance calls (10–25 min each, 2–3 per application reaching allowance) arrive without docketing system prompts because most prosecution docketing systems treat notice of allowance as a filing-deadline event, not a billing-activity event. For 30 applications reaching allowance per year: 30 × 2.5 calls × 17 min = 21.25 hours at 40% capture = 12.75 untracked hours = $5,100–$7,650/year.

PCT national phase coordination: asynchronous foreign associate correspondence across 18–30-month timelines

A PCT application entering national phase in four foreign jurisdictions — European Patent Office, Japanese Patent Office, Canadian Intellectual Property Office, and Australian Patent Office, as a representative example — requires the U.S. prosecution attorney to serve as the coordinating attorney in each jurisdiction: relaying prosecution instructions to the local associate, reviewing translated office action summaries, authorizing response strategies and claim amendments, and coordinating inventor declarations, power of attorney documents, and formal document execution. The billing challenge is not the volume of work per jurisdiction but the asynchronous, multi-party structure: the EPO, JPO, CIPO, and APO may each be at a different stage in their national phase examination simultaneously, and each foreign associate operates on its own communication timeline — sending translation summaries when completed, not when the U.S. attorney is at a billing desk.

For a solo patent attorney managing 15 PCT applications each in 4 foreign jurisdictions (60 national phase prosecution tracks): the coordination work generates approximately 3 email exchanges and 1 callback call per national phase track per year, totaling 60 callback calls (18 minutes average) and 180 substantive email sequences (12 minutes average of drafting + review per exchange). Call time: 18 hours at 35% capture = 11.7 untracked hours = $4,680–$7,020/year. Email composition and review: 36 hours at 45% capture = 19.8 untracked hours = $7,920–$11,880/year. Inventor declaration and formal document coordination — collecting signatures from inventors in different companies, countries, and roles, chasing authorization from the corporate IP department, and coordinating notarization — adds 8–15 hours of coordination contact per PCT application per year at 40% capture: 15 PCT applications × 11.5 avg hours × 60% untracked = 103.5 hours total / 61 hours tracked / 41.5 untracked hours = $16,600–$24,900/year.

The long-timeline compression problem is most severe for PCT national phase prosecution because the 18–30 month examination timelines in each foreign jurisdiction span multiple fiscal years. An attorney who reconstructs PCT coordination time at year-end must remember which calls and email threads belong to which of the 60 simultaneously active national phase tracks — a reconstruction task that, even with email search support, produces systematic undercount for calls that were not accompanied by a contemporaneous email summary. For a 15-PCT-application practice at $400–600/hr: total PCT coordination billing gap is $29,200–$43,800/year. Combined with office action and continuation billing gaps: total annual gap for a 50-application docket is $62,020–$93,030.

How ClaimHour fits patent prosecution practice

If you handle patent prosecution — and your invoices for active applications consistently understate the inventor consultation calls, IDS review calls, and foreign associate coordination calls you know you invested — ClaimHour was built for that gap. The passive capture logs every inventor consultation call (iOS call metadata: duration, timestamp, direction), every email composition session (sent/received counts and subject-line timestamps for matter attribution), and every document review session in Word or Pages — and surfaces them in a two-minute evening digest for matter and application attribution. No audio. No email bodies. No document contents. Privilege is preserved under ABA Formal Opinion 512. Join the waitlist and we'll email when early access opens.

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Related questions

What USPTO office action types generate the most unbilled inventor consultation time?

Non-final Office Actions with § 102 prior art (anticipation) and § 103 obviousness rejections require the most inventor consultation — 4–7 calls per response at 15–45 min each. The attorney must walk inventors through cited prior art references to identify distinctions. Restriction requirements generate an additional underrecognized consultation cycle: call to explain the restriction (20–45 min), review of elected claims (15–25 min), divisional strategy follow-up. At 40% capture: 32 OA responses/year × 118 min avg consultation = 63 hours × 60% untracked = 37.7 untracked hours = $15,080–$22,620/year at $400–600/hr; restriction consultations add $5,100–$7,650/year. Total OA gap: $20,180–$30,270/year.

How does continuation practice create a billing-record gap in patent prosecution?

Continuation strategy calls — deciding whether to file a continuation, CIP, divisional, or RCE — fall in compressed decision windows (3 months from notice of allowance) outside docketed billing prompts. The client calls when they read the allowance notice, the attorney advises strategy informally, and no billing entry is created. For a 50-application docket with 40% continuation rate: 20 strategy calls × 32 min = 10.7 hours at 40% capture = 6.4 untracked hours = $2,560–$3,840/year. IDS preparation calls add 25.2 untracked hours/year = $10,080–$15,120/year. Total continuation/IDS gap: $12,640–$18,960/year.

What makes PCT national phase prosecution especially billing-intensive for a solo patent attorney?

Managing 15 PCT applications in 4 foreign jurisdictions generates 60 simultaneously active national phase tracks, each sending callback calls and email sequences on their own timeline. Call time: 18 hours at 35% capture = 11.7 untracked hours. Email coordination: 36 hours at 45% capture = 19.8 untracked hours. Inventor declaration and formal document coordination: 15 PCT × 11.5 hrs × 60% untracked = 41.5 untracked hours. Total PCT gap: $29,200–$43,800/year at $400–600/hr. The long-timeline compression problem — reconstructing which coordination calls belong to which of 60 national phase tracks at year-end — is the most structurally severe billing failure mode in patent prosecution.

How does the USPTO examination timeline affect billing-record quality?

USPTO examination timelines of 14 months to 4+ years between filing and first office action create a specific failure mode: when a first OA arrives 2–3 years after filing, the attorney reconstructs prosecution history and client consultation context from memory. Notes from initial client calls exist as documents but not time entries. For a 50-application docket with 2.5-year average pendency: approximately 20% of applications are in pre-first-OA limbo at any time, generating annual docket-management calls — status inquiries, inventor personnel changes, corporate acquisition assignment recordal calls — that are systematically underlogged because they fall outside prosecution milestones that docketing systems use as billing prompts.

Further reading