Context: In recent months, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has signaled a more muscular approach to curbing purported abuses of the America Invents Act (December 2, 2025 ip fray article). In one such instance, USPTO Director John Squires intervened to deny institution of an inter partes review (IPR) requested by Tianma Microelectronics against LG Display (March 23, 2026 ip fray article). Squires deemed that Tianma had not been sufficiently transparent regarding real parties in interest (RPI), suggesting the Chinese government may be an RPI due to Tianma’s ownership structure.
What’s new: Squires has now halted another set of IPRs on the same basis, stating that petitioner TikTok had failed to establish whether a foreign government is an RPI. TikTok had asked the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to review the validity of seven patents owned by Cellspin, which filed infringement proceedings against it in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas in October 2023. The PTAB instituted IPR proceedings, but Squires intervened to vacate them.
Direct impact: So far, no party has succeeded in convincing the Federal Circuit to overturn a Squires decision, so TikTok would need to take extraordinary steps to challenge the vacation of the IPRs. The district court infringement proceedings, stayed during the IPR process, are now set to resume.
Wider ramifications: Squires’s decision to vacate the PTAB’s institution of TikTok’s IPR requests builds on his earlier denial of Tianma’s petition. It indicates that the USPTO Director is now intervening even after reviews have been instituted to ensure clarity on RPIs where petitioners may have structural links to foreign governments, particularly those perceived as being adverse to US national interests.
Here is Squires’s March 30, 2026 decision:
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