Context: Coke Morgan Stewart was appointed Acting Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) at the beginning of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term in January 2025. She subsequently became Deputy Director after the U.S. Senate confirmed John A. Squires to the role of Director in September 2025.
What’s new: In a social media post, Ms. Stewart today revealed she will leave the USPTO at the end of this week and return to private practice (July 27, 2026 Coke Morgan Stewart LinkedIn post).
Direct impact: At time of writing, the USPTO had not made any official announcement regarding Ms. Stewart’s departure, or when a new Deputy Director might be appointed (or who they might be).
Wider ramifications: As Acting Director, Ms. Stewart kicked off many of the efficiency drives that have characterized the USPTO under the second Trump administration, and continued to play an instrumental role in expanding those initiatives as Deputy Director. Perhaps the most consequential (and most controversial) of her initiatives was the significant expansion in discretionary denials of post-grant proceedings introduced by the 2011 America Invents Act (AIA), including inter partes review (IPR). As Acting Director, Ms. Stewart reinstated the NHK-Fintiv framework which had effectively been shelved under former USPTO Director Kathi Vidal, allowing the office to deny IPRs amid parallel district court litigation. She also issued a memorandum requiring Director Review of patent owners’ arguments for discretionary denial prior to any merits proceedings in AIA post-grant challenges (March 27, 2025 ip fray article). After his confirmation as Director, Mr. Squires issued a delegation of authority to Ms. Stewart, encouraging her to continue the discretionary denials program (October 1, 2025 ip fray article). While there has been criticism of the more strident USPTO we’ve seen under Ms. Stewart and Mr. Squires, the changes they have brought in have been broadly welcomed by many IP owners and investors. Those stakeholders will want to see more of the same even if Ms. Stewart is no longer in the Deputy Director’s chair.
Ms. Stewart had previously worked at the USPTO in various roles between 2011 and 2021, including a short stint as interim Deputy Director between January and August 2021.
After that she served as Virginia’s Deputy Attorney General and Senior Counsel with law firm O’Melveny & Myers, before returning to the USPTO in the wake of Mr. Trump’s re-election.
In the social media post announcing her departure, Ms. Stewart furnished a lengthy list of what she considered the key achievements of her time as Acting Director and Deputy Director of the agency:
“It’s been the honor of my lifetime to work here again and to help lead the agency in a time of unprecedented change. Some of our incredible wins include dramatically reducing the backlog of unexamined patent applications, changing docketing procedures so patent applications are examined more quickly and predictably, adjusting [Patent Prosecution Highway] timeframes to ensure fairness to U.S. applicants, promulgating a rule requiring U.S. counsel for foreign patent filers, creating the first corps-wide accolade for high-quality examination, increasing supervisory reviews of office actions, focusing on both improper allowances and rejections, reducing repeat challenges in AIA proceedings and reexaminations, encouraging post-grant reviews and other early AIA challenges to make patents durable and reliable for investment and job creation, changing the AIA discretionary processes to surface more considerations and take into account the economic interests of all parties, expanding the director review process so that more parties have access to administrative appeals, expanding resources for ex parte appeals, issuing new design patent guidance to protect digital designs, reissuing guidance on AI-assisted inventions to promote innovation in emerging technologies, permitting patent owners to file pre-order papers in ex parte reexamination proceedings, addressing pay inequities across the agency, expanding access to special act awards, creating new production-based bonus programs such as the pendency balance award, launching the ‘USPTO Hour’ to improve external communications and increase transparency, upgrading public spaces throughout our buildings including the public search facility, reducing discretionary expenses to reinvest in mission-critical projects, and increasing our operating reserves to ensure the agency’s long-term financial stability.”
She also offered special thanks to Mr. Squires and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard W. Lutnick, who re-appointed her in January 2021.