BobP,
I have some experience with this issue. I have an '05 seeg. It had the SE filter installed at the time of the sale and a replacement about 9k miles later. The box the replacement came in had a very small slip of paper indicating "Do Not Oil". I found this rather unbelievable, since Harleys route their crank case breather through the filter backing plate. I started checking the filter often and the second one showed a noticable amount of decay within 5k miles. I'll bet the bad portion of your filter is on the bottom when it is mounted on the bike. Any residual oil/gas mixture on the backing plate will eventually drip down onto the bottom edge of the filter when parked. My very nice dealer eventually replaced it under waranty with a K&N element, but I doubt HD approved.
Hilts