I encourage you to experience a patent prosecution yourself to test these claims. Fortunately, you can do it vicariously completely for free! The entire prosecution history of a patent, i.e. the arguments back and forth between the applicants and the examiner is available for free on the USPTO public PAIR website. Go to that site, enter an application number, then click on "File Wrapper".
It will be immensely boring reading. But you will see all the work that goes behind a patent application. The File Wrapper will have tons of documents, mostly boilerplate, so you want to look for documents titled Office Actions, (Non-Final Rejections, Final Rejections, Allowances) and Applicants Arguments in response.
You will see almost everything, including the evolution of the claims from application to issue, the search strategy the examiner uses, the prior art references presented, the rejection issued, and the applicants responses on 1) how the prior art does not apply or 2) amending the claims to sidestep the prior art.
There obviously is variance in quality of examiners, but typically they're a tough bunch to get anything past. I would echo everydayman's sentiment, that while they are they not all technical experts, they are very good at search and they do find stuff pretty well on average. They do have pressure to get rid of cases ASAP, but their default is to reject. I have seen more frivolous rejections than I've seen frivolous allowances.
It will be immensely boring reading. But you will see all the work that goes behind a patent application. The File Wrapper will have tons of documents, mostly boilerplate, so you want to look for documents titled Office Actions, (Non-Final Rejections, Final Rejections, Allowances) and Applicants Arguments in response.
You will see almost everything, including the evolution of the claims from application to issue, the search strategy the examiner uses, the prior art references presented, the rejection issued, and the applicants responses on 1) how the prior art does not apply or 2) amending the claims to sidestep the prior art.
There obviously is variance in quality of examiners, but typically they're a tough bunch to get anything past. I would echo everydayman's sentiment, that while they are they not all technical experts, they are very good at search and they do find stuff pretty well on average. They do have pressure to get rid of cases ASAP, but their default is to reject. I have seen more frivolous rejections than I've seen frivolous allowances.