PTAB/USPTO Update - September 2025

USPTO Staffing

• On August 28, President Trump nullified via executive order the USPTO's December 2024 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), which covers approximately 9,000 patent examiners and other professionals at the USPTO.
• On August 28, Bloomberg Law wrote that, according to an internal email from Acting Director Stewart to PTAB judges, current PTAB Chief Judge Scott Boalick and Vice Chief Judge Mike Tierney are being reassigned to lead the USPTO's Central Reexamination Unit and that Vice Chief Judge Kal Deshpande will become acting chief judge of the PTAB.

USPTO News

• Beginning on September 7, the USPTO will replace two legacy search applications—Patent Assignment Search and Assignments on the Web—with one Assignment Search application. The new Assignment Search application will be available here.
• Beginning on November 1, the USPTO will no longer offer email as an account verification method for a USPTO.gov account. Users will need to switch to one of the methods outlined here, including Okta Verify, a time-based one-time password (TOTP) authenticator application, or a Fast Identity Online (FIDO2) security key.
• On August 8, the USPTO announced that it had issued sanctions against a foreign trademark filing firm and terminated over 52,000 trademark applications and registrations connected to the firm.

Final Rules

• Eliminating Expedited Examination of Design Applications, 90 Fed. Reg. 39124 (August 14, 2025) [rule became effective August 14, 2025] (amending the Rules of Practice in Patent Cases by removing the provisions in the Code of Federal Regulations that provide for expedited examination of design applications. These provisions had previously been suspended since April 17, 2025.) [press release]

Interim Rules

• There are no new interim rules.

Proposed Rules

• There are no new proposed rules.

General Notices

• There are no new general notices.

PTAB Decisions

• New Precedential PTAB Decisions
  • There are no new precedential PTAB decisions.
• New Informative PTAB Decisions
  • There are no new informative PTAB decisions.
• New Director Review Decisions
  • Cisco Systems, Inc. v. WSOU Investments LLC, IPR2025-00188
    • Decision vacating decision granting institution, and denying institution – Paper 14 (Stewart August 22, 2025) [determining that the Board's analysis and weighting of Fintiv factors was erroneous, finding that the "Board gave too much weight to Petitioner's Sotera stipulation and its potential to reduce overlap with the issues raised in the parallel proceeding" and that the Board gave "undue weight to the merits of the petition" where it "failed to construe the claims or explain why it considered Petitioner's obviousness grounds to be 'particularly strong.'"]
  • Tessell, Inc. v. Nutanix, Inc., IPR2025-00298
    • Decision vacating decision granting institution, and denying institution – Paper 17 (Stewart August 22, 2025) [discretionarily denying institution where the petitioner had hired "nearly all the inventors of the challenged patent," finding that "[i]t is not an efficient use of Office resources to institute an IPR on a patent where the inventors of that patent now advocate for its unpatentability."]
  • Skechers U.S.A., Inc. v. Nike, Inc., IPR2025-00141
    • Decision vacating decision denying institution, and remanding to Board for further proceedings – Paper 23 (Stewart August 21, 2025) [determining that "[t]he Board erred in finding that Petitioner failed to sufficiently argue examiner error under Ecto World and abused its discretion in failing to reach Petitioner's arguments that [the prior art] teaches the limitations of the challenged claims" where the petitioner had argued that "the Board's determination in this case contradicts the factual findings in two prior inter partes review proceedings involving the same challenged patent"]
  • com, Inc. v. B.S.D. Crown, Ltd., IPR2025-00057
    • Decision vacating decision denying institution, and remanding for further proceedings – Paper 16 (Stewart August 12, 2025) [determining that "the Board appears to have misapprehended Figure 2 of the challenged patent" and remanding for the Board to allow "limited briefing to address this claim construction issue on remand"]
  • Arm Ltd. v. Daedalus Prime LLC, IPR2025-00207
    • Decision vacating decision denying institution, and referring to Board for further proceedings – Paper 14 (Stewart August 6, 2025) [finding that the balance of factors for discretionary denial had shifted in favor of referral where "the related litigation upon which the Decision relied, and Petitioner was not a party to, settled and was dismissed with prejudice less than a week after the Decision issued"]
  • TCL Electronics Holdings Ltd. v. Maxell, Ltd., IPR2025-00120
    • Decision vacating decision granting institution, and denying institution – Paper 14 (Stewart August 6, 2025) [finding that, "even assuming factors 4 and 6 both weigh against exercising discretion to deny institution," the Fintiv factors favor denial where "the parallel district court trial involves additional patents, is not stayed, and is in an advanced state, with trial likely to begin approximately eight months before the Board's final written decision"]

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