I also got through on Sunday. And spoke with an examiner today.

Zvi, regarding your second point, see http://www.iliplaw.com/americaisrael_patent_law/2016/06/memo-to-israel-pto-please-read-the-statute-before-you-take-your-electronic-filing-system-online.html

Agreed; that's what I alluded to about the transfer possibly being deemed a sham. Although at first blush, it seems to me that's a harder case to make than with the corporate veil situation, where the court basically says to the shareholders (usually just a handful of them in a privately held corporation), You can't hide behind the corporation, you're responsible for what the corporation did/owes. Here, the statute says that patents shall have the attributes of personal property (35 USC 261). That includes alienation of the property. So it may come down to showing that de facto Allergan didn't really give up ownership of the patents, as you've suggested. Thing is, I don't see a meaningful difference between the present situation and the situation of university that owns a pharmaceutical patent and licenses it to a company that can actually market the thing (think Princeton/Lilly and Alimta, or Weizmann/Teva and Copaxone). There's a difference in how the situations arose, but ultimately here as with the universities it's the licensee that's calling the commercial shots, with the patent owner merely collecting royalties. And that arrangement is a common one in the patent world, so I can see most judges being reluctant to tamper with the tenets of so long-standing a practice. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out over time.