Squires Likely to Be Confirmed as USPTO Director Thursday via Nuclear Option for Trump Nominees

On Wednesday morning, the U.S. Senate held a series of votes that teed up the confirmation vote for John Squires to serve as Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), along with 47 other Trump Administration nominees, as part of Senate Republicans’ exercise of the “nuclear option” for confirmations recently approved by Senate rulemaking. Squires will take the helm of the USPTO following months of largely patent-friendly PTAB reforms established by Acting Director Coke Morgan Stewart, creating optimism that has recently been undercut by reported efforts to create fee frameworks based on patent valuation.

‘Born Strong’ Patent Quality Remarks 

Squires’ nomination to serve as USPTO Director during the second Trump Administration became official in March, when that nomination was referred to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. IPWatchdog Founder and CEO Gene Quinn remarked that Squires’ nomination came much earlier in the political cycle than is typical for incoming USPTO Directors, who are typically confirmed by the Senate following the first full year of a new Presidential administration.

Although generally viewed as pro-patent and pro-innovation, Squires raised some concerns among the inventor community by focusing on the high error rate of patent issuance as reflected by claims cancelled through inter partes review (IPR) at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). Squires told the Senate Judiciary Committee at a confirmation hearing this May that a 68% rate of patents found defective in IPR reflected efforts that the agency must undertake to improve patent quality.

In written responses to the Judiciary Committee following the hearing, Squires reiterated the USPTO’s need to refocus on ensuring that patents are “born strong” but acknowledged that PTAB statistics only involve a subset of patents, not a measure of overall quality of patent examination at the agency’s front-end. On June 12, Squires’ nomination was approved by the Judiciary Committee via 20-2 voice vote, the only no votes coming from Democratic Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Cory Booker (D-NJ).

Stewart’s USPTO Governance a Response to PTAB Backlog 

Squires will step into the USPTO Director role following months of Office reforms by Acting Director Coke Morgan Stewart, who some had thought might be Trump’s nominee for Director prior to Squires’ nomination. In March, two months after being named Acting Director, Stewart announced an interim process for PTAB workload management through which Stewart decided requests for discretionary denials of IPRs filed by patent owners under her Director’s authority to decide IPR institution codified at 35 U.S.C. § 314(a). Through early September, discretionary denials granted by Stewart have been notable for considering the settled expectations of patent owners, which can arise as early as six years of the patent’s life in force. This week, Stewart issued a memorandum noting that the PTAB will explain its reasoning when making findings that differ from prior adjudications of validity for those patent claims from the USPTO, the U.S. International Trade Commission or U.S. district court.

Acting Director Stewart has been vocal in encouraging PTAB petitioners to bring validity challenges earlier in a patent’s lifetime, remarking at this June’s Intellectual Property Business Congress Global 2025 that many IPR petitioners should instead be utilizing post-grant review (PGR) proceedings and third-party submissions instead of waiting until an infringement suit to file an IPR petition. Although many in the patent community, especially patent owners, have been encouraged by Stewart’s handling of discretionary denial requests, a former deputy counsel for the USPTO recently called out Stewart’s “unaccountable governance” as Acting Director, accusing her of “pursuing an aggressive and probably unlawful patent-maximalist agenda.” Stewart responded at the first day of IPWatchdog’s Women’s IP Forum, citing the agency’s need to deal with the PTAB backlog left by outgoing Director Kathi Vidal and the yet-evolving nature of proceedings under the relatively new America Invents Act (AIA).

Squires, Acting Director Stewart and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick are known to be very aligned on patent matters. While many anticipate that this alignment will result in a pro-patent USPTO during the second Trump Administration, concerns over the innovation-chilling implications of a valuation-based framework for assessing patent fees have been raised as that framework has reportedly been debated within the Commerce Department. More recently, Secretary Lutnick has also threatened the exercise of Bayh-Dole march-in rights and is also developing a master deal to recoup federal R&D funding from university patent licensing agreements.