“Normally, the nomination for USPTO Director comes in the summer or fall, which often means the Director is not able to be confirmed until February or March a year after the President has started his term.” – Gene Quinn
John Squires
According to the United States Senate website, President Donald Trump has officially nominated John Squires to be the next Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The nomination was transmitted to the Senate on March 10 and referred to the Judiciary Committee.
Squires has been rumored to be the pick for USPTO Director for several weeks. He is currently Chair of the Emerging Companies and IP practice at Dilworth Paxson and former Chief IP Counsel at Goldman Sachs from 2000 to 2008. Squires also was a partner with Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP in New York and with Perkins Coie before that.
During IPWatchdog’s LIVE conference held last week, panelists discussed Squires’ past commentary on patents, noting that he has written about patent trolls quite negatively, although he is considered relatively pro-patent overall. LIVE attendee and inventor, Doug Pittman, told panelists in a Q&A period that Squires has served as his personal attorney and that “my opinion is he will turn this system inside out and upside down; he’ll turn it around. Squires has been in the foxhole and I’d be jumping for joy if I was an attorney, because he knows what he’s doing.”
While many in the IP community have welcomed Squires’ nomination, others have expressed hope that the current Acting Director of the Office, Coke Morgan Stewart, might have been the nominee. Stewart was sworn in as Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director in January and is known to be a strong believer in the U.S. patent system and patent rights in general. Stewart served in various senior management roles at the USPTO over more than a decade, ranging from Senior Advisor to Acting Deputy Solicitor to Acting Chief of Staff and ultimately after the conclusion of the first Trump term functionally serving as Deputy Director, with her title then officially having been “Performing the Functions and Duties of Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director of the USPTO.” In 2021, Stewart left the USPTO to become Deputy Attorney General for Virginia, responsible for the areas of healthcare, education, and social services, a role she held for nearly two years. After stepping down as Deputy Attorney General she joined O’Melveny & Myers LLP, a global law firm with 18 offices and more than 800 lawyers.
Prior to the rumors about Squires, Intel’s Head of IP Policy, Vishal Amin, was viewed as the frontrunner for the position. Brad Watts, who is now Vice President, Patents and Innovation Policy, at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) and previously served under Senator Thom Tillis’ (R-NC) as the Republican Chief Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, is also rumored to have been interviewed for the Director role.
IPWatchdog Founder and CEO Gene Quinn had the following comment on the news:
“John Squires is well known in certain sectors within the patent community, such as the fintech sector, where he has spent much of his career, and more importantly well known to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. I’ve been told that there is zero sunlight on patent matters between Lutnick, Squires and current Acting Director Coke Stewart. This suggests the second Trump Administration will be pro-innovation and pro-patent. It is also significant to note that President Trump has nominated a Director of the Patent Office far earlier than typical. Normally, the nomination for USPTO Director comes in the summer or fall, which often means the Director is not able to be confirmed until February or March a year after the President has started his term. With a nomination coming on March 10 it is entirely possible that Squires will be confirmed by the start of the summer, but should certainly be confirmed before the Senate goes on recess in August.”
