<Would the review of past documents have anything to do with the closing out of the full reexamination process, in preparing for a final certification of the patents?>

IMHO, No. I believe when the examiner posts his decision there is a single comprehensive listing of every piece of prior art that he considered, and is duly initialed. We are not there yet. I think the considerations are in developing the next OA, whatever it may be. And assuming there is some validity in what I previously said then.......

On the 148, the examiner considered a 7/2/09 IDS containing 30 pages of prior art submitted by patent holder and the 5/27/08 IDS contining 11 pages of prior art submitted by the patent owner. To me, it sounds like he is making a case for recert.

On the 336, the examiner has only considered the 4/24/09 IDS submitted by the reexam requester. Could be he is going to look at more and its early, or he may have good arguments for rejecting the reexam request w/o referencing other prior art. This one is hard to call since he apparently just started looking. The fact that he considered the reexam request may not be a negative, since he is new to the patent and reexam history and looking at the request is probably his first order of business.

GLTA, Opty