USPTO’s Coke Stewart Addresses Challenges Office is Facing for LIVE 2025 Attendees

Coke Stewart

The final two sessions of IPWatchdog LIVE 2025 featured IP experts discussing the future of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and U.S. patent system, including remarks by USPTO Acting Director Coke Morgan Stewart, who told the audience that, despite the challenges and shakeups the Office is currently experiencing, she has a positive outlook for the future of the Office, in part due to the unique appreciation the administration’s leadership has for IP rights.

Many have wondered how the Trump Administration’s various executive orders have affected the Office, but Stewart told attendees that less than 3% of the workforce has taken advantage of the deferred resignation program and that the losses are evenly dispersed throughout the Office. “It hasn’t had a great effect on us,” Stewart told the audience.

Some have feared a hiring freeze will contribute to the increase of an already historically high total inventory of applications, which Stewart said now stands at 1.2 million (of which 840,000 are unexamined applications). On this point Stewart explained the freeze should only last 90 days and the Office is “using the time to be thoughtful about which positions to fill and which not to.” While the agency lost some probationary employees, they were not “mission critical” positions, and employees are coming back to existing Office spaces as a result of the Return to In-Person Work order. Stewart said she is confident this will help with the Office’s attrition rate, which at one point climbed to 40% for probationary examiners (i.e., those with less than 1-year of experience), which is approximately twice the historic rate of attrition for probationary examiners. “That’s incredibly harmful to operations. People seem to like being together and being part of a team,” Stewart said of morale since employees have come back.

Just before Stewart spoke, a panel that included former USPTO Director Andrei Iancu; former International Trade Commission (ITC) Commissioner and Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School, F. Scott Kieff; Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Bristol-Myers Squibb Henry Haddad; and former USPTO Commissioner for Patents Bob Stoll got real about the changes that must be made to ensure strong IP rights and improve what Stoll characterized as “a lack of focus by management at the USPTO” in recent years.

Stoll directed his comments to Stewart and the other USPTO staff present in the audience when he added, “right now, with everything burning, we need to refocus the management of the PTO to improve the handling of applications in a timely manner” rather than spending time on things like international engagement with other IP offices, for example. “The examiners are unhappy, and when you have an unhappy corps, they’re not going to be doing what you need them to,” Stoll said, noting that the Office has an approximately 30% turnover rate.

Stoll was Commissioner for Patents under former USPTO Director David Kappos and successfully took on the task of reducing a significant backlog at the time—something the Office is facing again today. IPWatchdog Founder and CEO Gene Quinn asked Stoll what advice he would give the new administration for addressing that problem, and Stoll said the first thing he learned when he joined the Office was to listen. “Listen to constituents, listen to examiners, listen to supervisory patent examiners (SPEs)—listen to everybody and find out what their concerns are and what motivates them,” Stoll said.

Iancu, however, said there’s only so much water you can squeeze out of a stone and that the scale of the current backlog requires more than just changing examiner morale. He suggested more immediate solutions, such as implementing a deferred examination option, and said the patent system “fundamentally needs to change” because we presently have “a dysfunctional system.”

“It’s taking too long to get IP rights, and if you believe IP rights are good for the economy and jobs, delaying issuance of those rights will delay the positive effects,” Iancu said.

While Stewart said she appreciated the panel’s comments and experience and fundamentally agreed “there are major challenges before us,” she emphasized that she has a positive outlook on the future of the USPTO and IP system under this administration because of their personal investments in IP. Trump is one of the most iconic brand owners in the world, Vice President JD Vance is a copyright owner thanks to his bestselling book, Hillbilly Elegy, and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick is the owner of hundreds of patents. “Each of these leaders knows firsthand [the value of] the IP rights associated with their creations,” Stewart said.

“I’ve been through three presidential transitions and they’re difficult and unpredictable, but one thing that’s certain is we are in a time of great change,” and in the same way the administration is looking to drastically transform the U.S. government, Stewart said she believes they are aiming to transform the IP system for the benefit of IP owners.

UPDATED March 5, 2025 at 12:32pm ET to clarify that of the 1.2 million in total applications pending at the Office only 840,000 are unexamined. 

UPDATED March 5, 2025 at 2:08pm ET to clarify that the 40% attrition figure related to probationary examiners and not all examiners.