USPTO Director Squires looks at PTAB IPR petitions through national security as well as economic policy (domestic manufacturing) lens

Context:

• Institutions of inter partes reviews (IPRs) by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) are far substantially lower as a result of USPTO Director John A. Squires’s (and then-Acting Director Coke Morgan Stewart’s) policies (December 2, 2025 ip fray article). The purpose of those policies was to prevent serial challenges and other forms of actual or potential abuse of the America Invents Act (AIA).
• In recent months, various petitions have been withdrawn by parties that presumably concluded the new political environment greatly reduced their chances of success.

What’s new: We have three updates from this month of March 2026 on Director Squires’s policy-making and rule-making. One of them has foreign trade implications for those pushing for Licensing Negotiation Groups in the EU or desiring to turn the UK into a standard-essential patent (SEP) rate-setting forum that imposes terms even across borders. Another makes U.S. manufacturing and a petitioner’s small business status relevant factors. And a new precedential decision denies an IPR over an issue involving potential influence by a foreign government. The key term there is RPI, the reverse of IPR.