Squires, Stewart Comments Align with Congress’s Original Vision for PTAB

At first glance, certain comments by U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director nominee John Squires during his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing raised questions about whether he sees the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in the same way as Acting Director Coke Morgan Stewart. But on closer examination, and when viewed in context, Squires’s comments could reflect alignment not only with Acting Director Stewart, but with Congress’s objective when it passed the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) — that patent quality be vetted as early as possible, during or shortly after examination, and that later, back-end challenges only be available in limited circumstances.

Squires’s Comments

During his Senate confirmation hearing, in response to a question from Senator Cruz, Squires surprised many “by suggesting the problem is not with a PTAB that is aggressively invalidating issued patents that are statutorily presumed to be valid, but rather that the problem is found on the front end, which leads to poor quality patents routinely being issued by the Office.” And in his responses to written questions after the hearing, Squires pledged to ensure that the “Congressional intent and goals of the PTAB are met.”

It was hard to know what to make of these responses, because he did not elaborate on what he understood Congress’s “intent and goals” to be, other than “that the PTAB serve as a faster and cheaper alternative to district court litigation.” But Squires pointed to certain concrete issues: the limited use of front-end mechanisms such as Post-Grant Reviews (PGRs) and third-party submissions of prior art during examination, the overuse of later-stage petitions for Inter Partes Review (IPRs), and the need to address the disparity. In doing so, he subtly but meaningfully aligned himself with Acting Director Stewart, who has been more direct in calling out imbalances of this type at the PTAB.

Acting Director Stewart’s Recent Actions and Comments

Since her appointment, Acting Director Stewart has implemented certain changes in exercising her broad statutory discretion to deny institution of IPRs. She rescinded a memorandum issued by the previous USPTO Director, resurrected the Fintiv factors, and reiterated the importance of settled expectations in deciding whether the PTAB should accept an IPR petition.

Speaking at the Intellectual Property Business Congress (IPBC) Global 2025 conference in June, Stewart provided context for her recent actions, urging greater reliance on early-stage tools like third-party submissions of prior art while a patent is under examination, and PGRs that can be filed within nine months after a patent issues. Her view is that filing IPRs many years after a patent has been granted should not be the primary mechanism for addressing patent quality.

Much like Squires during his confirmation proceedings, Stewart cited Congressional intent in her remarks, emphasizing that early-stage challenges are more in line with “what the AIA intended”:

“Stewart’s view is the Patent Trial and Appeal Board has been taking up nearly triple the number of inter partes review petitions annually than the 500 cases that Congress intended when it passed the America Invents Act….

… ‘Again, we want to incentivize these early challenges. Unfortunately, these early tools have been rarely used in the past, because there are other portions of the AIA that encourage competitors to wait until they are sued for infringement to take part in this joint exercise to improve patent quality. This is not good for the system. It is not what the AIA intended. We all need to care about the front end, when patents are issued, not ignore issued patents until we are sued,’ Stewart mentions.”

If Squires has the same view of Congressional intent as Stewart, his comments could indicate not only alignment with her recent actions and statements, but a return to Congress’s original vision when it created the PTAB more than a decade ago.

What Congress Originally Intended for IPRs

An IPWatchdog article published nearly eight years ago, titled “A Look Back at the Legislative Origin of IPRs,” has newfound relevance and offers valuable historical context to the recent remarks by Stewart and Squires. The article lamented that “Congress, the top leadership of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and most involved stakeholders at the time envisioned IPR’s quite differently,” and that, at the time the article was written, IPRs had “little resemblance … to what most supporters of the AIA envisioned upon its passage.”

The article documented the history of the AIA, the legislative vision behind IPRs, and how the USPTO’s implementing regulations ultimately led the administrative procedure far away from Congress’s original intent. The article presciently noted that Congress intended to encourage early patent challenges, and to discourage the use of IPRs:

“Important to the development of the overall structure of the AIA was the principle that the public should be encouraged to bring any challenges early. Members of the public would be allowed to bring prior art directly to the Examiner’s attention during prosecution, and be allowed to petition for institution of a PGR subject to estoppels pertaining only to issues actually raised. Challengers would be discouraged from waiting to petition for IPR reviews by limiting the substantive scope of IPR’s, lowering the IPR institution rate as compared to ex parte reexaminations, and heightening the applicable IPR estoppel to the ‘raised or reasonably could have been raised’ standard.”

The piece further observed that “IPR’s were never envisioned as proceedings of right, but rather as exceptional proceedings that would require the Director’s approval to institute.” Acting Director Stewart has restored Congress’s original vision for IPRs with her recent actions on discretionary denials.

The AIA traces its roots back to a 2004 report by the National Academies of Sciences entitled, “A Patent System for the 21st Century.” Among other suggestions, the report proposed an early-stage administrative process to challenge patent validity — “postgrant open review.” (See pp. 95-103.) Such patent challenges would be limited to a defined period after issuance so that patent owners could enjoy “quiet title” in their patent rights, and not have a cloud of uncertainty hanging over them throughout a patent’s life: “[a] majority of members recommends that the window for a challenge should be limited to one year from the date of grant so that uncertainty is reduced later in the patent’s life.” (Id. at 101.)

During the AIA debates, Congress emphasized the importance of such a “first window” (what became PGRs) as the preferred way for challenging patents, rather than a “second window” (what became IPRs).

At a hearing in 2006, Representative Lamar Smith, a lead sponsor of the AIA, noted that the time limit on post-grant proceedings was “intended to encourage early weeding out of questionable patents.” (House Judiciary, IP Subcomm. Hr’g, 109th Cong., at 2, Apr. 27, 2006.)

Witnesses warned that later-stage administrative challenges could disrupt settled expectations about a patent’s validity. One observed that “patent owners have a right to expect quiet title at some point without facing an endless series of challenges.” (House Judiciary, IP Subcomm. Hr’g, 110th Cong., at 55, Apr. 26, 2007.) Another cautioned, “[i]f a patent can be easily challenged at any time under a low standard of proof — even years after the patentee and the public have come to rely on it … patents will have much less value, and investment predicated upon them will inevitably be diminished.” (Senate Judiciary Comm. Hr’g, 110th Cong., at 223, June 6, 2007.) And even a witness who advocated for a later “second window” acknowledged the need to be “protective of the legitimate interests of inventors in securing quiet title in their patents.” (House Judiciary, IP Subcomm. Hr’g, 109th Cong., at 26, Apr. 27, 2006.)

In a 2008 Senate Judiciary Committee report, Senator Patrick Leahy, the other lead sponsor of the AIA, described the first window as a beneficial extension of the examination process:

“The expectation is that those who are interested in certain technology fields — or in certain patent holders — will assiduously follow the issuance of the patents that interest them, and be ready to bring to the USPTO’s attention any immediate concerns.” (S. Rep. No. 110-259, at 20)

— something that seems even more feasible in today’s day and age, with rapid advances in artificial intelligence.

The report further noted that “significant limitations” should be placed on the second window, emphasizing that “the values of certainty (and the consequent business decisions based on that certainty) are not insubstantial.” (Id. at 21.) Other senators added that “at some point the patent should be final and the inventor should enjoy the benefit of their invention without a cloud of uncertainty lingering over it during the full life of the patent.” (Id. at 71.) They expressed concerns about the second window: “The overwhelming lack of consensus on whether or how to implement the 2nd window should signal to this Committee to proceed cautiously.” (Id.) Another advised that the AIA “should ensure that second or successive second-period proceedings are few and far between.” (154 Cong. Rec. S9988, daily ed. Sept. 27, 2008.)

By 2011, the House Judiciary Committee continued to focus on encouraging patent challenges at an early stage, affirming that “[t]he intent of the post-grant review process is to enable early challenges to patents.” (H.R. Rep. No. 112-98, pt. 1, at 47-48, June 1, 2011.) The Committee recognized “the importance of quiet title to patent owners to ensure continued investment resources” (id. at 48) and highlighted early-stage procedures for challenging a patent:

“After an application is published, members of the public—most likely, a competitor or someone else familiar with the patented invention’s field—may realize they have information relevant to a pending application.…

The Act improves the process by which third parties submit relevant information to the UPSTO by permitting those third parties to make statements concerning the relevance of the patents, patent applications, and other printed publications that they bring to the USPTO’s attention.” (Id. at 48-49.)

Congress’s vision when it enacted the AIA was that patent quality preferably should be ensured through rigorous examination and early administrative review. It would not have expected multiple serial or parallel IPR petitions, filed many years down the road after expectations about a patent’s validity have already been settled, to become the norm.

A Chance to Fulfill the True Promise of the PTAB

If the USPTO’s next Senate-confirmed Director follows through on Acting Director Stewart’s recent agenda, the PTAB could finally fulfill the promise Congress envisioned over a decade ago — to ensure patent quality through timely reviews at the front end of the patent lifecycle. That would mean not just procedural improvements, but a restoration of public confidence in the integrity, fairness, and finality of the U.S. patent system.

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