In 2025, we won some hard-fought victories in the fight for patent reform: Senator Peter Welch introduced the ETHIC Act, scrutiny intensified around Merck’s Keytruda product hop and Amgen’s 30-year Enbrel monopoly, and public awareness of patent abuse continued to grow. Yet despite this progress, our year-in-review newsletter must focus on something deeply troubling: the hollowing out of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“the USPTO”).
What does a hollowed-out USPTO look like? Pathways created to challenge wrongly granted patents are choked off. The already-low standards for examining and granting patents are then insulated and further cemented. Expertise is pushed out. Public accountability is dismantled. Transparency vanishes.
Read our full story detailing how a small group of policymakers—including USPTO Director John Squires, Acting USPTO Director Coke Morgan-Stewart, Senators Thom Tillis and Chris Coons, and former USPTO Director Andrei Iancu—pushed industry-backed efforts to hollow out the USPTO.
HOW THE INDUSTRY DISMANTLED THE USPTO IN 2025
Relevant News Rundown
- We teamed up with STAT to analyze findings from a new national survey we commissioned to understand the public’s top concerns on drug pricing.
- Teva removed over 200 improper Orange Book patent listings under pressure from the FTC.
- Former FTC Chair Lina Khan appeared on The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart and The Adam Friedland Show to explain how patent abuse drives up drug prices.
- Our CEO, Tahir Amin, sat down with MLex to discuss how we’re helping Congress and the public understand the connection between patent abuse and high drug prices.
- I-MAK submitted comments to the USPTO’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on IPR Practice. In case you missed it, the USPTO is proposing major changes to the PTAB’s Inter Partes Review process that, if adopted, will be the death knell of the only effective mechanism the public has to contest unworthy patents.