Intel’s Deal With Trump Threatens Its Patent Defense Strategy

The Trump administration’s 10% stake in Intel Corp. may give plaintiffs in patent disputes a weapon against the company after a recent ruling by the US Patent and Trademark Office focused on a company linked to China’s government.

PTO Director John Squires said last week that partial government ownership of a company can disqualify it from challenging a patent’s validity at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, adding to a list of rationales that have reduced access to the tribunal. Squires advanced the new concept as he rejected a Tianma Microelectronics patent validity challenge, noting that the Chinese government owns 10% or more of the company’s stock.

But he also emphasized the rule would apply “to a foreign government just as it applies to the U.S. Government,” setting off alarm bells among patent lawyers that’ve represented tech firms at the PTAB. Intel in August reached an unconventional deal with the Trump administration for the US government to take an ownership position in a bid to reinvigorate the company and its domestic chip production efforts.

If Squires’ logic holds, “now the only US manufacturer of advanced semiconductors may not be able to file for inter partes review,” said David Simon, Intel’s former chief patent counsel, referring to a type of PTAB proceeding that allows infringement defendants to challenge obvious or otherwise invalid patents.

Simon, who left the company in 2012, said in a phone interview that Intel’s been a champion of the PTAB, which could in turn make it unpopular with PTO leadership that’s scaled back the role of the tribunal.

Intel has historically been one of the most frequent targets of patent lawsuits in the US and one of the most frequent users of the IPR process. “A $40 billion business line attracts a lot of patent litigation,” Simon said, while noting that Intel has been a staunch defender of the PTAB since its creation by Congress in 2011.

The company has filed around 275 IPR petitions since then, and at least 18 petitions were reviewed under the Trump administration’s new discretionary denial framework, according to a Bloomberg Law review of PTAB dockets. Of the 18, four of the chipmaker’s recent petitions were granted a review, setting up validity trials.

An Intel spokesperson declined to comment on Squires’ ruling.

Now it’s up to the director to decide if his ruling does indeed apply to Intel and other US companies, said McCoy Smith, another former Intel lawyer who now works at Lex Pan Law in Portland, Ore.

“It’s an interesting argument,” Smith said. It’s a vulnerability, at least.”

The Tianma case is still pending, Squires said in an emailed statement, “so it would not be appropriate for the Office to comment” on whether the ruling would similarly apply to Intel. However, he pointed to a footnote in the decision that includes a caveat: “Percentage ownership (whether greater or lesser than 10%) is not necessarily dispositive.”

“There’s wiggle room” for the director, said Tom Krause, a former PTO solicitor general who has been critical of the agency’s current leadership.

Squires reasonably interpreted US Supreme Court precedent as creating a restriction barring a PTAB “petitioner that’s truly under the control of China” or another government, Krause said. “A handpuppet’s a good word for it.”

“I think Intel would be able to show, that ‘no, the US doesn’t have that type of control’ by virtue of its 10%,” he added.

Discretionary Denial Factors

Even a narrow reading of the Tianma ruling leaves Intel in difficult territory at the PTAB.

Squires and his predecessor Coke Morgan Stewart took over the initial screening process for patent challenges and adopted a series of “discretionary denial” factors to determine which petitions will reach the PTAB and determinations on their merits. These changes sharply reduced the percentage of challenges that get instituted for trial—to 30% for the second half of 2025 from 65% in 2024—and led many patent-suit defendants to adopt alternative litigation strategies.

Tech and manufacturing groups, including Intel, have criticized the moves and the resulting reduced access to the PTAB—arguing in legal briefs at the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that they’re now more exposed to plaintiffs asserting weak patents that are, nonetheless, expensive to defend in federal courts.

That court has so far declined to intervene or curb the PTO director’s powers when it comes to PTAB institution. That creates an environment where Squires is free to adopt new factors and apply them narrowly, broadly, or somewhere in between, Smith said.

On the one hand, Squires could decide Intel occupies a different position than Tianma when it comes to the level of government-control over their patent litigation decisions, he said. Alternatively, though, Intel might be put in a similar box, Smith said, adding that the logic could extend to Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which each provide 15% of their Chinese AI chip sales to the US government in exchange for export licenses.

It “becomes a screaming headline because Director Squires is being very aggressive in setting forth new policies around discretionary denial,” Smith said.

The case is Tianma Microelecs. Co. v. LG Display Co., P.T.A.B., IPR2025-01579.