I have just received a legal opinion after a patent search from my lawyer. I am scheduled to meet with him in the coming days.
But for now, his opinion is documented as such:
Therefore, I cautiously recommended proceeding with your patent application as presently designed focusing on the structure.
Is this a standard opinion?
No search can find all relevant references. Any search provider needs some wording to say that what they turned up doesn’t kill your chances (if that is the case) but also not guarantee anything.
Standard in the sense that they set forth that they can do any careless job from here as they please if you hire them — what are you going to argue or sue on once they failed to obtain a patent on your invention?
I have a highly reputed patent attorney friend from Los Angeles who agreed: You can practically get a patent on almost anything — because it is nearly impossible to fail to pass the novelty requirement; however, merely being able to define a narrow aspect of, say, a utility method or system that also surpassed the non-obvious standard (i) will not mean that the patent will give an exclusive right if it is incorporating other patents and (ii) the patents that are considered in this insight, in an overwhelming majority, will include patents that have no practical use (they can't protect from workarounds, does not actually cover the embodiment one wishes to market etc.).
Basically, one can concede to almost all the arguments of the USPTO on non-obviousness, and eventually get a completely useless patent which will only serve the purpose of paying processing and maintenance fees afterwards. In this sense, if one reads narrowly the attorneys admonition as meaning it is highly unlikely to get a patent based on their search is almost certainly an incorrect reading or if it is correct then the advice is most likely factually untrue.
However, their search may or might have turned up such prior art that questions the merit of the prosecution of a scope of the embodiments of an invention that is reasonable to be sought and/or is in line with the specific business intent of the inventor(s) and/or applicant(s).
In every other sense, I concur with @George White.
