by Dennis Crouch
In January 2026, USPTO Director John Squires issued his first decision targeting a Chinese state-linked entity’s inter partes review petition, and the result is both less dramatic and more revealing than the national-security framing might suggest. Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. v. Micron Technology, Inc., IPR2025-00098 & IPR2025-00099, Paper 38 (USPTO Jan. 15, 2026). The Director vacated the PTAB’s decisions granting institution and denied YMTC’s petitions challenging two Micron NAND flash memory patents (U.S. Patent Nos. 8,945,996 and 10,872,903). The decision is designated informative.
The case sits at the intersection focal points. The first is geopolitical. YMTC is a Chinese semiconductor manufacturer founded in 2016 by the partially state-owned Tsinghua Unigroup with approximately $24 billion in initial state-backed investment. The company was placed on the Bureau of Industry and Security’s Entity List in December 2022 as an organization “reasonably believed to be involved, or to pose a significant risk of being or becoming involved, in activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.” 15 C.F.R. § 744.11. The Department of Defense separately designated YMTC as a “Chinese Military Company Operating in the United States” in January 2024. Against this backdrop, YMTC filed IPR petitions challenging two Micron NAND flash memory patents. After Micron sought Director Review, Dir. Squires issued a Show Cause order on November 10, 2025, requiring YMTC to justify why adjudicating its petitions was an appropriate use of the Office’s limited resources given its Entity List designation. See Dennis Crouch, Shutting the Patent Office Door: YMTC and the Entity List, Patently-O (Nov. 16, 2025).
The second focal point is IPR process. Dir. Squires has been systematically tightening the IPR petition process, including the real-party-in-interest requirement. In September 2025, he de-designated SharkNinja Operating LLC v. iRobot Corp., IPR2020-00734, Paper 11 (PTAB Oct. 6, 2020), which had permitted PTAB judges to ignore RPI deficiencies in some instances. With SharkNinja gone, the statutory text of § 312(a)(2) returned to full force as an independent threshold requirement: a petition “may be considered” only if it identifies “all” real parties in interest. Failure to disclose means the petition is simply not in condition for consideration.
In response to the petition, the patentee Micron made two RPI related arguments:
- That the Chinese government is an undisclosed RPI behind YMTC’s petitions and failure to disclose should lead to dismissal of the petition.
- Even if disclosed, the case should be dismissed because the Chinese Government is not a “person” permitted to petition for IPR under the Supreme Court’s holding in Return Mail, Inc. v. United States Postal Service, 587 U.S. 618 (2019) (U.S. government is not a “person” under the statute).
In an initial show-cause order, Dir. Squires added a third potential reason to deny institution: (3) that YMTC is on the entity list.
Squires dismissed the petition based only on the first ground listed above while expressly declining to reach the Return Mail question, calling it “an issue of first impression” that he “need not decide today.”
Real Party in Interest Under § 312(a)(2): The AIA requires that every IPR petition identify "all real parties in interest." 35 U.S.C. § 312(a)(2). An RPI is generally an entity that exercises or could exercise control over a petitioner's participation in the proceeding, or has a preexisting relationship with the petitioner such that the party would be bound by or benefit from the outcome.
YMTC was given multiple opportunities to clarify its corporate identity and ownership structure, but chose not to do so. In its pre-institution briefing, YMTC argued that Micron’s evidence was “unsupported and irrelevant” and that the evidence was “not sufficient” to put the RPI question in dispute. It did not, however, affirmatively explain who controls YMTC or why the Chinese government should not be considered an RPI. After Dir. Squires granted Director Review and issued a Show Cause order requiring YMTC to justify why adjudicating its petitions was an appropriate use of the Office’s limited resources given its Entity List status, YMTC’s response again failed to engage with the substance.
Dir. Squires characterized YMTC’s filing as offering “a mini-treatise on the non-controversial assertion that good patent policy seeks to invalidate bad patents” combined with “a grievance against Patent Owner’s alleged ‘weaponiz[ing]’ the BIS Entity List.” But, YMTC never disputed its Entity List designation, never denied that its activities pose a significant risk of involvement in activities contrary to national security, and never explained its actual corporate identity for RPI purposes.
There is a natural inference to draw from a party’s persistent refusal to disclose its own identity and ownership when directly asked. In criminal proceedings, of course, the Fifth Amendment protects against compelled self-incrimination, and we resist drawing adverse conclusions from a defendant’s silence. But an IPR is an administrative proceeding initiated by the petitioner. YMTC came to the Patent Office asking for relief. It chose to file these petitions. And having chosen to invoke the Board’s jurisdiction, YMTC bore the affirmative statutory obligation under § 312(a)(2) to identify all real parties in interest. This is not a case of a party being forced to speak against its interests; it is a case of a party seeking government action while refusing to satisfy the conditions Congress imposed on access to that action.
The decision also reflects Dir. Squires’s willingness to use the Corning Optical remedy aggressively. Corning Optical Commc’ns RF, LLC v. PPC Broadband, Inc., IPR2014-00440, Paper 68 (PTAB Aug. 18, 2015) (precedential). Under Corning Optical, a petition that fails to identify all RPIs is not merely deficient in a way that can be corrected; the petition is “not in condition for consideration,” and the proceedings are terminated.
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The decision also includes a suggested alternative ground. Footnote 3 indicates that the Director could also deny review based upon other reasons such as “administrative efficiency” or based on a party’s status as a sovereign. This is the discretionary denial pathway.
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Ultimately, we have a decision that signals concern about Chinese state-linked entities using the IPR system while carefully resting on a neutral, generally applicable statutory ground. The Entity List framing, the Show Cause order, and the national security language all create context for this particular case, but the actual legal basis is one that applies to any petitioner with opaque ownership or corporate relationships.
In a prior post, I briefly explored the national treatment question which remains theoretically relevant but practically moot in this case. The Paris Convention (Article 2(1)) and TRIPS Agreement (Article 3) require that foreign nationals receive treatment no less favorable than domestic nationals in matters of intellectual property protection. If the USPTO were denying IPR access based solely on nationality, a TRIPS violation would be straightforward. But the RPI ground provides a facially neutral basis for denial that applies regardless of the petitioner’s country of origin. Any petitioner, domestic or foreign, that fails to identify all real parties in interest faces the same consequence under § 312(a)(2). The national treatment issue would become more pressing if the USPTO applied different levels of RPI scrutiny to Chinese entities than to domestic ones with similarly complex ownership. Neither of those steps has been taken here. And, recognize that the treaties include both explicit and implicit national security exceptions.