Reexams Jumped in Q3 as Petitioners Faced IPR Constraints
November 19, 2025
The USPTO continued to expand the use of discretionary denials at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in Q3 2025 through a series of decisions and rule changes that have collectively made it harder for patent defendants to win institution for inter partes review (IPR) petitions. The resulting constraints on IPR availability have continued to push would-be petitioners toward ex parte reexaminations—which, while slower than IPRs, are not subject to discretionary denials to the same extent.
As RPX has previously noted, the popularity of reexams has tended to climb in response to policy shifts bolstering discretionary denials: In 2020, the year that the Fintiv decision was designed as precedential, the number of requests for ex parte reexam increased by 21%, and then by 53% in 2021. While they held steady at about 330 requests per year in 2022 (the year Vidal issued the just-overturned guidance limiting NHK-Fintiv) and 2023, they surged by 27% in 2024 (following a decision by Vidal, in CommScope v. Dali Wireless, that limited the “compelling merits” exception then in effect under the 2022 guidance).
Reexams have climbed even more substantially in 2025: After a relatively flat first quarter, reexams swung back upward by 32% in Q2 compared to the same quarter last year (around when the aforementioned rollbacks to Vidal-era Fintiv restrictions took place). The biggest jump came in Q3, when reexams rose by 41%—with the highest number of reexams in any quarter from 2019 onward. Indeed, Q3 2025 saw about the same number of reexam requests as the entire year of 2019. Year-to-date through the third quarter, reexams are up by 24% compared to the same period last year.
Additionally, data indicate that the share of patents with reexam requests that have also been litigated in district court was 69% in Q1-Q3 2025, up from 54% last year. Data also show that defendants have requested IPRs for a decreasing share of those same patents, from a peak of 36% in 2021 to 20% in 2024 overall and 21% in 2025 so far.
For more on the PTAB and discretionary denials, see RPX’s third-quarter review.
