#uspto

#uspto

The Federal Circuit heard oral argument today in Apple Inc. v. Squires, 24-1864, a long-running challenge to the USPTO's Fintiv discretionary denial framework. Apple, Cisco, Google, and Intel argue that the NHK-Fintiv rule should have been adopted through notice-and-comment rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) rather than through precedential Board designations.

The USPTO has quietly rolled out substantial changes to its examiner Performance Appraisal Plan (PAP) for FY2026. PAP is the formal framework the USPTO uses to measure, evaluate, and rate patent examiners' job performance.

Although the federal government shutdown appears ready to begin at 12:01 AM on October 1, 2025, the United States Patent and Trademark Office is likely to continue in normal operation by drawing on its Operating Reserve which the agency has been building up over the past several years. A prolonged shutdown would eventually exhaust the reserves and trigger an end to spending.

Although the patents challenged in these proceedings have not been in force for as long as those in IPR2025-00780 and IPR2025-00781, this fact alone does not tip the balance against discretionary denial.

The Acting Director has discretionarily denied more than 60% of PTAB Petitions and referred about 40% to the PTAB, which found over 90% merit worthy.

DesignVision functions as a centralized tool for querying multiple industrial design data sources and is part of the USPTO's effort to tackle the patent examination backlog.