Posts in Government

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday granted a motion from the U.S. Solicitor General to participate in oral argument as an amicus in the copyright case between Cox Communications and Sony Music Entertainment. The order allows the government to weigh in during the December 1 hearing on whether an internet service provider (ISP) can be held contributorily liable for copyright infringement committed by its users.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) has denied three mandamus petitions asking the court to step in and curb the recently-implemented practice by which the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director decides whether to institute inter partes review (IPR) proceedings. In the one precedential ruling in In Re Motorola Solutions, Inc., the CAFC—in an opinion authored by Judge Linn—rejected Motorola’s arguments that then-Acting USPTO Director Coke Morgan Stewart violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution by deinstituting eight IPR petitions it filed against claims of Stellar LLC’s patents.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced today that it is extending the comment period for a proposed rule published on October 17 by 15 days in response to requests from stakeholders. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) titled “Revision to Rules of Practice before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board” has as its stated goal “to focus inter partes review proceedings on patent claims that have not previously been challenged in litigation or where prior litigation was resolved at an early stage.” A press release issued on the NPRM said that, under current practice, “the Office is concerned that even extremely strong patents become unreliable when subject to serial or parallel challenges.”

Continuing his pro-patent owner tack so far, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director John Squires  on Wednesday designated as “informative” a Director Review decision in which he relied on the recently-designated precedential decision in Revvo Technologies, Inc. v. Cerebrum Sensor Technologies, Inc. to vacate and deny institution of an inter partes review filed by Tesla, Inc.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) latest USPTO Hour focused on patent eligibility updates today, one day after Director John Squires on Tuesday designated as precedential a September 26, 2025, decision that champions eligibility for artificial intelligence (AI) inventions. The Appeals Review Panel (ARP) decision in Ex parte Desjardins, Appeal 2024-000567 (Decided September 26, 2025) was mentioned in Squires’ recent remarks at the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), where he told attendees that there is no need to overhaul patent law to protect AI, as proper application of existing laws is sufficient to secure patent rights for technologies of the future.

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director John Squires issued a Director Review decision on Monday, which he designated as precedential, vacating a decision granting institution of an inter partes review (IPR) because the Board erred in accepting the petitioner’s inconsistent claim constructions without explanation. In Revvo Technologies, Inc. v. Cerebrum Sensor Technologies, Inc., the PTAB instituted the IPR on September 15, 2025, and Director Review was initiated sua sponte in order to address the claim construction issues.

On Friday, October 31, Professors Shlomit Yanisky-Ravid, Lawrence Lessig and a number of other professors and researchers filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of Dr. Stephen Thaler’s petition for a writ of certiorari in Thaler v. Perlmutter, which is urging the Court to grant certiorari and recognize copyright protection for works generated by artificial intelligence (AI). The brief argued that “excluding AI-generated works from copyright protection threatens the foundations of American creativity, innovation, and economic growth,” warning that the lower court’s interpretation, which requires human authorship, disregards the “spirit of the Copyright Act.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) is calling on President Donald Trump to reconsider his Executive Order on Most Favored Nation (MFN) pricing for U.S. medicines, which the GIPC said “would jeopardize the innovation that has made the United States a global leader in life sciences.” In the Chamber’s latest blog post, the GIPC’s Senior Vice President, Global Innovation Policy Brad Watts and Chamber Vice President of Health Policy, Lexi Branson—while acknowledging the goal of reducing drug prices as a “worthy one”—outlined the risks of MFN pricing and called on the Administration to instead “focus on market-based solutions that lower costs while preserving the incentives that drive medical breakthroughs.”

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director John Squires delivered his first public remarks on Friday, addressing a number of key issues he has been focused on during his first five weeks in office. With respect to the Office’s backlog, he told attendees of the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) Annual Meeting that his administration “inherited an unexamined patent application backlog that was an absolute dumpster fire.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Wednesday that it will be making it easier to develop biosimilar drugs in its ongoing effort to lower drug prices. The agency published draft guidance yesterday that recommended relaxing the requirements “to support a demonstration of biosimilarity in a biologics license application (BLA) submitted under section 351(k) of the Public Health Service (PHS) Act.”

Yesterday, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director John Squires sent a memo to all administrative patent judges (APJs) at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) informing them that the agency was restoring the practice of requiring petitioners before the PTAB to identify all real parties in interest (RPI) prior to institution. The change is intended to address the exploitation of PTAB proceedings by foreign state-backed actors arising as an unintended consequence of less stringent RPI standards enforced by previous administrations.

On October 24, the National Weather Service Employees Organization (NWSEO) and the Patent Office Professional Association (POPA) filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging that Executive Orders Nos. 14,251 and 14,343 unlawfully threaten employees’ rights to organize and bargain collectively, not on the basis of “legitimate ‘national security’ issues,” but to retaliate against unions such as NWSEO and POPA for their efforts to represent employees. The unions are asking the court to enjoin the application and enforcement of the executive orders while the case is litigated and requested a hearing for November 13.

Howard Lutnick has been universally criticized by industry for his reported proposal to tax patent values and revenue share with universities. Howard Lutnick is absolutely right about the problem. Here’s why. The patent system was designed for individual inventors. Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers—these were lone entrepreneurs securing temporary monopoly rights in exchange for disclosing their inventions to the public. But sometime after World War II, corporations and universities completed a quiet takeover of the patent office. Today’s patent landscape is dominated by patent oligarchs: systematic corporate R&D programs filing thousands of applications annually, not individuals pursuing personal innovation.

On day one of IPWatchdog’s Life Sciences Masters 2025, panelists addressed a number of looming policy proposals that are negatively impacting the life sciences industry and urged stakeholders to get involved and speak out in order to minimize their effects. An introductory panel that included program sponsors Sherry Knowles of Knowles Intellectual Property Strategies and Robert Sahr of Wolf Greenfield, as well as Becky Kaufman of Ohio State University’s Office of Legal Affairs, discussed topics including Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick’s patent tax proposal and the administration’s threats to march in on federally-funded university patents.