Kwolek led polymer research at DuPont until her retirement in 1986. She was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1994 and received the National Medal of Technology in 1999, among many other honors.
In an ex parte appeal, an applicant seeks to demonstrate to a three-judge panel that the examiner erred in rejecting the claimed invention and that the rejection should be reversed. In this way, the PTAB functions as a quality control check on examination to ensure that examiners make correct patentability decisions.