Posts in Government

This week on IPWatchdog Unleashed, I spoke with Lisa Jorgenson, who is Deputy Director at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Jorgenson had just attended IPWatchdog LIVE 2026 and spoke on our final panel along with former U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director David Kappos, former USPTO Director Andrei Iancu, and former International Trade Commission (ITC) Commissioner Scott Kieff. She joined me immediately following the conference at IPWatchdog Studios for a wide-ranging discussion that pulled back the curtain on an institution many in the IP community think they understand—but often do not really appreciate.

Amicus briefs in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) review of issues raised by a 2025 Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) rehearing decision regarding the judicially-created doctrine of obviousness-type double patenting (ODP) were due on Friday, March 27. At least one amicus is urging the Office to affirm the decision’s holding and clarify that the focus should be on “whether there is any unjustified extension of term when determining if an ODP rejection is appropriate” in order to create more consistent outcomes in examination and to harmonize the approaches of the PTAB and examining corps.

On remand from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) on Thursday reaffirmed its decision that The Broad Institute, Inc., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and President and Fellows of Harvard College (“Broad”) were the first inventors of the use of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing in eukaryotic cells.

The U.S. government filed its brief in opposition yesterday to Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Bristol Myers Squibb Company’s (BMS) petition for writ of certiorari challenging the government’s Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program. A split U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit decision  in September 2025 affirmed a grant of summary judgment to the government that the imposition of the Program via the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) does not violate the companies’ constitutional rights.

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet conducted its first oversight hearing of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) during the second Trump Administration. The harshest lines of questioning for USPTO Director John Squires during the hearing were reserved for the agency’s notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to reform rules of practice at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) as well as President Trump’s political influence at the agency. During the hearing, Squires also confirmed that the agency’s Patent Public Advisory Committee (PPAC) would soon be revived, following an offer to join PPAC extended last night to an undisclosed independent inventor.

In the final session of IPWatchdog LIVE 2026 on Tuesday, March 24, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Deputy Director Coke Morgan Stewart had a conversation with IPWatchdog Founder and CEO Gene Quinn in which she confirmed the Office is paying attention to the recent surge in ex parte reexamination filings and also said she is “optimistic” that the pending Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) will be finalized. 

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order list denying a petition for writ of certiorari filed by inventor Noah Healy to challenge rulings upholding a patent examiner’s subject matter eligibility rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 101 at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Healy’s pro se petition challenged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s decision to affirm the examiner’s rejection as violating the meaningful review requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) due to conflicting statutory theories on patentability that were never sufficiently explained by the agency.

On day one of IPWatchdog LIVE 2026, panelists discussed the global IP landscape, the economics of patent portfolios, patent dealmaking and the ins and outs of drug patent critiques, before U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) Judge Pauline Newman and Retired CAFC Judge Paul Michel introduced the recipients of their respective eponymous awards for 2026.

The current U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) leadership has made its position on serial patent challenges crystal clear. USPTO Director Squires warned that “even extremely strong patents” cannot survive repeated rounds of review. See NPRM Comments (10/16/2025)…. Once again, Director Squires and Deputy Director Stewart are right on the mark. Allowing excessive serial challenges to patents is unfair to patent owners and undermines the patent system.

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director John Squires stated in his Senate confirmation hearing last year that “with born strong patents and robust quality marks we can reclaim America’s primacy, revitalize industry and growth, proudly export our culture, boost national security and improve our lives.” If the goal is to have “born strong patents”, we must be honest about what is born with patents and what is not. For instance, a credible mark of novelty is born with every patent—that much is clear. However, novelty is not just technical newness—it is also market impression. If novelty were only technical newness, people would own patents without their technology ever being used in the market. There would be no point to the patent system. This means that the rest of patents—their assertion power, damages recovery power, term limitation, claim bundling provision, inter partes review (IPR) fee requirement, and more—must also be part of the birth. This is how to create born strong patents.

The latest chapter in the long-running saga of inventor Gil Hyatt is beginning to unfold. The current fight is over prosecution laches—and whether the doctrine even exists. In his last appeal to the Federal Circuit, Hyatt argued that prosecution laches is not available in Section 145 proceedings because it is inconsistent with the Patent Act of 1952, as confirmed by recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings in Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (2014) and SCA Hygiene Products Aktiebolag v. First Quality Baby Products (2017). Whether Hyatt is correct about prosecution laches being inconsistent with the 1952 Patent Act, it is clear that the Supreme Court has unequivocally ruled in both Petrella and SCA that laches simply does not exist when there is a statutorily prescribed timeframe to act.

Spurred by reports that House leaders are trying to fast-track a bill to separate the U.S. Copyright Office from the Library of Congress, a coalition of consumer rights, industry, open internet and library groups has again sent a letter to the House Committee on Administration urging it to consider the bill on the regular timeline to avoid “unintended consequences.” A full committee markup of the bill is scheduled for tomorrow, March 18,

Yesterday, U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, and Peter Welch (D-VT) sent a letter addressed to Liang Rubo, CEO of Chinese technology company ByteDance, urging the immediate shutdown of ByteDance’s video generation platform Seedance 2.0. Calling ByteDance’s recent pledges to respect copyright “a delay tactic,” the Senators join a growing chorus of copyright advocates raising alarms about rampant infringement being committed by users of Seedance and other generative artificial intelligence (AI) platforms.

Last week, consumer electronics giant Samsung filed responses to requests for Director Review by patent owner Netlist in validity proceedings instituted at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). Netlist is contending that the trials should be dismissed because Samsung failed to identify all real parties in interest (RPIs) in the PTAB petitions challenging Netlist patent claims directed to dynamic random access memory (the ‘087 patent) and memory modules for reduced noise in signal transmissions (the ‘731 patent).