The PTO intended that its secret Sensitive Application Warning System (‘SAWS’) program would avoid embarrassment to the agency by requiring additional layers of review for potentially controversial patent applications. The program had exactly the opposite effect and the patent community harshly criticized the PTO for the secret and arbitrary nature of the program. The PTO promptly threw the SAWS program under the bus and promptly issued decisions in two of this author’s delayed patent applications. We will never know if SAWS was the cause of the delays because the program was secret and the PTO is not talking. The bottom line: The PTO reads its own press and the SAWS program is dead.— Robert Yarbrough, Esq.