The current Director of the USPTO, John Squires, has been instrumental in making changes to how the USPTO does business, literally. Right off the bat, Director Squires clarified the USPTO policies regarding Section 101 patentability in the case of advanced technologies, including blockchain, artificial intelligence and medical diagnosis. In an "Open Letter" titled "Bringing the USPTO Back to the Future," Director Squires announced that effective October 20, 2025, he will personally determine whether to institute trial proceedings rather than delegating this function to PTAB panels. This announcement is intended to restore proper respect for the Patent Office’s examination process and the presumption of validity that issued patents deserve. It is expected that these changes will favor patent owners.
Stepping back, in October 31, 2024, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) finalized a Director Review Process for certain decisions made in the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), set forth in 37 C.F.R § 42.75. A Director Review may be requested in a proceeding under part 42 of 37 C.F.R. where the Board’s decision on institution, the Board’s final decision, or the Board’s decision granting rehearing of either a decision on institution or a final decision implicates potential (a) abuse of discretion, (b) important issues of law of policy, (c) erroneous findings of material fact, or (d) erroneous conclusions of law. The Director’s decision to grant or deny a request will be communicated directly to the parties in the proceeding. Director Review decisions may be nominated for precedential, informative, or routine decisions.
Thus far, it is too early to determine if denial rate has changed since the Director’s announcement in October 2025. Petitioners including Google, Apple, and Samsung appear to continue to pursue this avenue. However, patent owners do appear to face a level playing field.
In May 8, 2026, a panel of administrative patent judges issued a decision (“Panel Decision”) to delegate Director Review, for Smaxtec Inc., Petitioner, v. St Reproductive Technologies, LLC, Patent Owner for U.S. Patent 9,844,206 (“‘206 Patent”). This Panel Decision stems from a Petition by the Petitioner requesting inter partes review, IPR2024-00875, in which, on November 20, 2025, the Board had earlier found that Petitioner had shown, by a preponderance of the evidence, that all of the challenged claims are unpatentable in their Final Written Decision.
Claim 1 of the ‘206 Patent requires matching sensed animal information to animal information stored in a database. Dependent claim 4 further requires that the animal information stored in the database comprises health information and that the logical value indicates an occurrence of an illness in an animal.
Provided the finding in the Final Written Decision, the Patent Owner filed a Request for Director Review of the Final Written Decision as to dependent claims 4, 6, and 18-20. The Petitioner had filed a response, arguing that they do not agree with the Patent Owner’s additional arguments for reversal.
In a paper dated April 2, 2026, the Director indicated that “[h]aving considered the Request and Response, I find the Decision warrants further review and that the Delegated Rehearing Panel (“DRP”) is the appropriate body to give reconsideration to the Board’s work, which goes to the integrity of the patent system.”
In the Panel Decision, the panel concluded that the record does not support a finding that the subject matter of dependent claim 4 would have been obvious in view of the cited prior art. The panel also found that a dependent claim 18 was based on a misunderstanding of arguments, and asserted that claim 18 should be treated consistent with claim 4. This conclusion follows from an argument by the Patent Owner that unpatentability determination for claim 18 was based on a mistaken understanding that Patent Owner relied on its claim 1 arguments, instead of its claim 4 arguments. As such the Board’s Final Written Decision was modified to conclude that dependent claims 4, 6, and 18-20 have not been proven by a preponderance of the evidence to be unpatentable.
Thus, patent owners subject to inter partes reviews face a more reasonable playing field.
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