by Dennis Crouch
The USPTO continues to move quickly with sweeping changes to its "popular" inter partes review (IPR) process. On October 17, 2025, the agency announced that Director John Squires is reclaiming personal authority over all IPR and PGR institution decisions. In an "Open Letter" titled "Bringing the USPTO Back to the Future," Director Squires announced that effective October 20, 2025, he will personally determine whether to institute trial proceedings rather than delegating this function to PTAB panels. The announcement came on the same day that the agency published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to create mandatory bars to IPR institution in multiple categories. These actions follow a rapid ramping-up of discretionary denials over the past nine months under President Trump. Together, these developments represent a coordinated effort to dramatically restrict access to IPRs in ways that favor patent owners under the banner of restoring "quiet title" to issued patents.
I believe we will see a major downturn in IPR petitions in the coming months. Over the past decade, the IPR process has been an extremely effective tool used by accused infringers to cancel patents as obvious. Director Squires has argued that it is too effective with high institution rates and successful invalidity challenges destabilizing patent rights and undermined validity confidence that issued patents should enjoy. From this perspective, patents survive examination by expert examiners only to face a "second bite at the apple" through PTAB review, creating uncertainty that discourages innovation and investment. The Director frames these reforms as restoring proper respect for the Patent Office's examination process and the presumption of validity that issued patents deserve. But there's a reason accused infringers prefer IPRs to litigation: although obviousness can also be challenged in court, history shows that a novice jury is much less likely to find the claims obvious than would a PTAB panel of subject matter experts.
Background:
- John A. Squires, An Open Letter From America’s Innovation Agency: Bringing the USPTO Back to the Future: Return of Institution Authority under 35 U.S.C. §§ 314 and 324 to the Director (Oct. 17, 2025);
- See also, Dennis Crouch, All Quiet on the PTAB Front: USPTO Proposes More Restrictions on IPR Institution, Patently-O (Oct. 16, 2025) (discussing the NPRM);
- Dennis Crouch, Have We Reached the Shenanigans Threshold?, Patently-O (Oct. 2025);
- Dennis Crouch, Centralized Expanded Discretionary Denial, Patently-O (Sept. 2025);
- Dennis Crouch, Ultra Vires or Policy Discretion? Federal Circuit Now Grapples With Boundaries, Patently-O (July 15, 2025);
- Dennis Crouch, PTAB’s New “Settled Expectations” Doctrine, Patently-O (July 2025);
- Dennis Crouch, Timing is Everything: PTAB’s Renewed Reliance on Discretionary Denial Based on Litigation Timelines, Patently-O (July 2025);
- Dennis Crouch, USPTO Director Takes Control of Expanded Discretionary Denial, Patently-O (Mar. 2025);
- Dennis Crouch, The Return of Robust Discretionary Denials, Patently-O (Apr. 2025); and
- Dennis Crouch, SAP’s Mandamus Petition Challenging Trump Admin’s Discretionary Denials, Patently-O (June 30, 2025).