AIA Review Petitions Plummeted in Q4 Following Changes Limiting IPR
January 21, 2026
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) saw just 194 petitions for America Invents Act (AIA) review in the third quarter of 2025, including 181 petitions for inter partes review (IPR) and 13 petitions for post-grant review (PGR). This marks a 44% decrease compared to Q4 2024 and a 45% drop compared to Q3 2025—and makes Q4 2025 the fourth-lowest full quarter since the PTAB’s launch in September 2012.
That said, 2025 overall saw just 5% fewer PTAB petitions filed (at 1,280) compared to 2024 (1,357 petitions filed), as a result of relatively higher filings in Q1 and Q2 that offset some of the loss from Q4.
The likely cause of this dramatic drop is the series of changes that the USPTO has made to the processes and standards governing AIA review institution over the past year.
In February, then-Acting USPTO Director Coke Morgan Stewart withdrew guidance issued in 2022 by former USPTO Director Kathi Vidal that had limited discretionary denials based on the status of parallel litigation under the NHK-Fintiv rule. Soon after, Stewart implemented an interim two-stage process in which she would decide requests for discretionary denial, rather than a panel of PTAB administrative patent judges (APJs) making that determination. Under that interim process, Stewart followed an approach allowing discretionary denials based on a broader set of factors—including a controversial one allowing denials for petitions against patents longer in force based on the “settled expectations” of the parties. Only if Stewart determined no discretionary denial was warranted would the acting director then refer the petition to a PTAB panel for consideration of the merits and nondiscretionary factors.
As a result of these changes, the AIA review institution rate steadily declined—from 68% in Q1 to 42% in Q2 and just 23% in Q3.
Then, on October 17, recently confirmed USPTO Director John Squires announced that he would now handle the entire AIA review institution process, including both discretionary denials and the merits/nondiscretionary factors—making those determinations with no accompanying written decisions in most cases. Squires explained that the new process was necessary in part to eliminate the “appearance of self-interest” resulting from workload structures that based APJs’ compensation in part on the number of trials they instituted, and to “[e]nhance transparency and public trust through a single line of authority”.
See RPX’s fourth-quarter review for more on the impact of these changes—including how the new institution process has played out in practice, and a resulting increase in ex parte reexaminations as defendants seek alternatives to IPR.