Two Rejections Per Allowance

March 5, 2026IPR, PatentpaidDennis Crouch

by Dennis Crouch

Over the past several weeks, I published a trilogy of posts examining USPTO allowance rates from three different temporal vantage points: filing cohort dates, applicant disposal dates, and examiner action dates.

The 20-Year Allowance Rate Arc: From Trough to Peak and Back Again, Patently-O (Feb. 27, 2026);
The Real-Time View: USPTO Allowance Rate “Dips” to 75%, Patently-O (Mar. 1, 2026); and
The Third Way: Examiner Action Dates and the Allowance Rate Curve, Patently-O (Mar. 2, 2026).

Each approach answers a slightly different question about when and how examination policy produces outcomes. This post adds a complementary dataset: instead of looking at final outcomes (allowance or abandonment), it looks at the office actions themselves.

Three charts below are all built from a dataset of published utility patent applications and plotted as three-month moving averages that smooths the data a bit.

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Five Petitions, Five Denials: The Federal Circuit’s Mandamus Wall Grows Higher

February 28, 2026CAFC, IPR, PatentpaidDennis Crouch

by Dennis Crouch

Five more mandamus petitions challenging IPR institution denials. Five more denials. In a series of nonprecedential orders issued between February 24 and 27, 2026, the Federal Circuit rejected every theory that petitioners offered for why the USPTO's discretionary denial of inter partes review should be subject to judicial oversight. The petitioners included major technology companies (Intel, Tesla), a Chinese communications firm (Kangxi Communication Technologies), an education technology company (Kahoot!), and a startup founded by the very inventors of the patents it sought to challenge (Tessell). Each presented a different factual scenario and a different legal theory. None succeeded. In re Kangxi Communication Technologies (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., No. 2026-115 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 24, 2026); In re Intel Corp., No. 2026-113 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 24, 2026); In re Tessell, Inc., No. 2026-117 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 24, 2026); In re Kahoot! AS, No. 2026-119 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 25, 2026); In re Tesla, Inc., No. 2026-116 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 27, 2026).

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