Fighting to Keep Bad Patents in Check: 2025 in Review

A functioning patent system depends on one basic principle: bad patents must be challengeable. In 2025, that principle was repeatedly tested—by Congress, by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and by a small number of large patent owners determined to weaken public challenges. 

Two damaging bills, PERA and PREVAIL, were reintroduced in Congress. At the same time, USPTO attempted a sweeping rollback of inter partes review (IPR), one of the most important mechanisms for challenging wrongly granted patents. 

EFF pushed back—on Capitol Hill, inside the Patent Office, and alongside thousands of supporters who made their voices impossible to ignore.

Congress Weighed Bills That Would Undo Core Safeguards

The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act, or PERA, would overturn the Supreme Court’s Alice and Myriad decisions—reviving patents on abstract software ideas, and even allowing patents on isolated human genes. PREVAIL, introduced by the same main sponsors in Congress, would seriously weaken the IPR process by raising the burden of proof, limiting who can file challenges, forcing petitioners to surrender court defenses, and giving patent owners new ways to rewrite their claims mid-review.

Together, these bills would have dismantled much of the progress made over the last decade. 

We reminded Congress that abstract software patents—like those we’ve seen on online photo contests, upselling prompts, matchmaking, and scavenger hunts—are exactly the kind of junk claims patent trolls use to threaten creators and small developers. We also pointed out that if PREVAIL had been law in 2013, EFF could not have brought the IPR that crushed the so-called “podcasting patent.” 

EFF’s supporters amplified our message, sending thousands of messages to Congress urging lawmakers to reject these bills. The result: neither bill advanced to the full committee. The effort to rewrite patent law behind closed doors stalled out once public debate caught up with it. 

Patent Office Shifts To An “Era of No”

Congress’ push from the outside was stymied, at least for now. Unfortunately, what may prove far more effective is the push from within by new USPTO leadership, which is working to dismantle systems and safeguards that protect the public from the worst patents.

Early in the year, the Patent Office signaled it would once again lean more heavily on procedural denials, reviving an approach that allowed patent challenges to be thrown out basically whenever there was an ongoing court case involving the same patent. But the most consequential move came later: a sweeping proposal unveiled in October that would make IPR nearly unusable for those who need it most.

2025 also marked a sharp practical shift inside the agency. Newly appointed USPTO Director John Squires took personal control of IPR institution decisions, and rejected all 34 of the first IPR petitions that came across his desk. As one leading patent blog put it, an “era of no” has been ushered in at the Patent Office. 

The October Rulemaking: Making Bad Patents Untouchable

The USPTO’s proposed rule changes would: 

• Force defendants to surrender their court defenses if they use IPR—an intense burden for anyone actually facing a lawsuit. 
• Make patents effectively unchallengeable after a single prior dispute, even if that challenge was limited, incomplete, or years out of date.
• Block IPR entirely if a district court case is projected to move faster than the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). 

These changes wouldn’t “balance” the system as USPTO claims—they would make bad paten