The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has proposed new rules that would limit the public’s ability to challenge improperly granted patents at the source – the Patent Office itself. This could give patent trolls exactly what they’ve been seeking for years: a way to keep bad patents alive and out of reach.
Under the new rules, defendants may not be able to file an Inter Parties Review (IPR) unless they promise not to challenge the patent’s validity in court. If a patent survives any earlier validity fight, the door would be blocked from being opened again even years later if new prior art surfaces.
This could lead to a situation where people have exactly one way to beat a troll – spend millions on experts and lawyers, then take their chances in front of a federal jury. The USPTO claims this is fine because defendants can still challenge patents in district court, but a real district-court validity fight costs millions of dollars and takes years.
These new rules would harm innovation and everyday technology users by limiting the public’s right to challenge bad patents. Congress created IPR as a fast and affordable way for the public to correct the Patent Office’s mistakes. Only Congress can rewrite this system, not agency rulemaking.
The public needs to speak up and file public comments opposing these rules before December 2. The EFF is asking supporters to use the federal government’s public comment system to make their voices heard. Every voice matters, and your comment will carry more weight if you add a personal sentence or two of your own.
Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/patent-office-about-make-bad-patents-untouchable