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On November 4, 2025, Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, John Squires, designated the Ex Parte Desjardins decision of September 26, 2025 as "precedential." We previously wrote about the decision and its implications here.
Such opinions, issued by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (or alternatively, directly by the director or by the Appeals Review Panel which oversees the PTAB), establish binding (rather than just persuasive or informative) authority for the PTAB and Examiners within the USPTO on broadly applicable principles.
Of significance here, the Desjardins decision, as we previously discussed, cautions against the overbroad application of 35 U.S.C. 101 (subject matter eligibility), and affirms that artificial intelligence inventions are not categorically excluded from patentability.
The designation provides more firm guidance to practitioners and inventors when it comes to obtaining valuable patent protection for their AI inventions. In particular, Desjardins specifically notes that improvements to an AI model itself can be sufficient for the purpose of patent eligibility, even when the claims recite, on their face, an ostensibly "abstract idea."
This designation also highlights the USPTO's current trend towards encouraging further innovation in AI, and how the USPTO can provide much needed protections for these types of inventions.
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