Tech Groups Challenge Administration’s Patent-Boosting Reforms

A coalition of tech, auto, and manufacturing companies urged the Federal Circuit to support a software company’s challenge to a Trump administration policy change at the US Patent and Trademark Office increasing the difficulty to administratively attack the validity of patents.

The group—which includes US*MADE, the High Tech Inventors Alliance, and the Automotive Alliance for Innovation—filed an amicus brief Friday taking aim at PTO Director Coke Morgan Stewart’s reforms retroactively scrapping a safe-harbor policy implemented by her predecessor, Kathi Vidal. The earlier approach, set out in a 2022 memorandum, allowed patent suit defendants to ensure validity challenges at the Patent ...