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EFF Tells Patent Office: Don’t Cut the Public Out of Patent Review
EFF has submitted its formal comment to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) opposing a set of proposed rules that would sharply restrict the public’s ability to challenge wrongly granted patents. These rules would make inter partes review (IPR)—the main tool Congress created to fix improperly granted patents—unavailable in most of the situations where it’s needed most.
If adopted, they would give patent trolls exactly what they want: a way to keep questionable patents alive and out of reach.
If you haven’t commented yet, there’s still time. The deadline is today, December 2.
Tell USPTO: The public has a right to challenge bad patents
Sample comment:
I oppose the USPTO’s proposed rule changes for inter partes review (IPR), Docket No. PTO-P-2025-0025. The IPR process must remain open and fair. Patent challenges should be decided on their merits, not shut out because of legal activity elsewhere. These rules would make it nearly impossible for the public to challenge bad patents, and that will harm innovation and everyday technology users.
IPR Is Already Under Siege, And These Rules Would Make It WorseSince USPTO Director John Squires was sworn into office just over two months ago, we’ve seen the Patent Office take an increasingly aggressive stance against IPR petitions. In a series of director-level decisions, the USPTO has denied patent challengers the chance to be heard—sometimes dozens of them at a time—without explanation or reasoning.
That reality makes this rulemaking even more troubling. The USPTO is already denying virtually every new petition challenging patents. These proposed rules would cement that closed-door approach and make it harder for challengers to be heard.
What EFF Told the USPTOOur comment lays out how these rules would make patent challenges nearly impossible to pursue for small businesses, nonprofits, software developers, and everyday users of technology.
Here are the core problems we raised:
First, no one should have to give up their court defenses just to use IPR. The USPTO proposal would force defendants to choose: either use IPR and risk losing their legal defenses, or keep their defenses and lose IPR.
That’s not a real choice. Anyone being sued or threatened for patent infringement needs access to every legitimate defense. Patent litigation is devastatingly expensive, and forcing people to surrender core rights in federal court is unreasonable and unlawful.
Second, one early case should not make a bad patent immune forever. Under the proposed rules, if a patent survives any earlier validity fight—no matter how rushed, incomplete, or poorly reasoned—everyone else could be barred from filing an IPR later.
New prior art? Doesn’t matter. Better evidence? Doesn’t matter.
Congress never intended IPR to be a one-shot shield for bad patents.
Third, patent owners could manipulate timing to shut down petitions. The rules would let the USPTO deny IPRs simply because a district court case might move faster.
Patent trolls already game the system by filing in courts with rapid schedules. This rule would reward that behavior. It allows patent owners—not facts, not law, not the merits—to determine whether an IPR can proceed.
IPR isn't supposed to be a race to the courthouse. It’s supposed to be a neutral review of whether the Patent Office made a mistake.
Why Patent Challenges MatterIPR isn’t perfect, and it doesn’t apply to every patent. But compared to multimillion-dollar federal litigation, it’s one of the only viable tools available to small companies, developers, and the public. It needs to remain open.
When an overbroad patent gets waved at hundreds or thousands of people—podcasters, app developers, small retailers—IPR is often the only mechanism that can actually fix the underlying problem: the patent itself. These rules would take that option away.
There’s Still Time To Add Your VoiceIf you haven’t submitted a comment yet, now is the time. The more people speak up, the harder it becomes for these changes to slip through.
Comments don’t need to be long or technical. A few clear sentences in your own words are enough. We’ve written a short sample comment below. It’s even more powerful if you add a sentence or two describing your own experience. If you mention EFF in your comment, it helps our collective impact.
Sample comment:
I oppose the USPTO’s proposed rule changes for inter partes review (IPR), Docket No. PTO-P-2025-0025. The IPR process must remain open and fair. Patent challenges should be decided on their merits, not shut out because of legal activity elsewhere. These rules would make it nearly impossible for the public to challenge bad patents, and that will harm innovation and everyday technology users.
Further reading:
- EFF Comment to USPTO, Docket No. PTO-P-2025-0025
AI Chatbot Companies Should Protect Your Conversations From Bulk Surveillance
EFF intern Alexandra Halbeck contributed to this blog
When people talk to a chatbot, they often reveal highly personal information they wouldn’t share with anyone else. Chat logs are digital repositories of our most sensitive and revealing information. They are also tempting targets for law enforcement, to which the U.S. Constitution gives only one answer: get a warrant.
AI companies have a responsibility to their users to make sure the warrant requirement is strictly followed, to resist unlawful bulk surveillance requests, and to be transparent with their users about the number of government requests they receive.
Chat logs are deeply personal, just like your emails.Tens of millions of people use chatbots to brainstorm, test ideas, and explore questions they might never post publicly or even admit to another person. Whether advisable or not, people also turn to consumer AI companies for medical information, financial advice, and even dating tips. These conversations reveal people’s most sensitive information.
Without privacy protections, users would be chilled in their use of AI systems.
Consider the sensitivity of the following prompts: “how to get abortion pills,” “how to protect myself at a protest,” or “how to escape an abusive relationship.” These exchanges can reveal everything from health status to political beliefs to private grief. A single chat thread can expose the kind of intimate detail once locked away in a handwritten diary.
Without privacy protections, users would be chilled in their use of AI systems for learning, expression, and seeking help.
Chat logs require a warrant.Whether you draft an email, edit an online document, or ask a question to a chatbot, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in that information. Chatbots may be a new technology, but the constitutional principle is old and clear. Before the government can rifle through your private thoughts stored on digital platforms, it must do what it has always been required to do: get a warrant.
For over a century, the Fourth Amendment has protected the content of private communications—such as letters, emails, and search engine prompts—from unreasonable government searches. AI prompts require the same constitutional protection.
This protection is not aspirational—it already exists. The Fourth Amendment draws a bright line around private communications: the government must show probable cause and obtain a particularized warrant before compelling a company to turn over your data. Companies like OpenAI acknowledge this warrant requirement explicitly, while others like Anthropic could stand to be more precise.
AI companies must resist bulk surveillance orders.AI companies that create chatbots should commit to having your back and resisting unlawful bulk surveillance orders. A valid search warrant requires law enforcement to provide a judge with probable cause and to particularly describe the thing to be searched. This means that bulk surveillance orders often fail that test.
What do these overbroad orders look like? In the past decade or so, police have often sought “reverse” search warrants for user information held by technology companies. Rather than searching for one particular individual, police have demanded that companies rummage through their giant databases of personal data to help develop investigative leads. This has included “tower dumps” or “geofence warrants,” in which police order a company to search all users’ location data to identify anyone that’s been near a particular place at a particular time. It has also included “keyword” warrants, which seek to identify any person who typed a particular phrase into a search engine. This could include a chilling keyword search for a well-known politician’s name or busy street, or a geofence warrant near a protest or church.
Courts are beginning to rule that these broad demands are unconstitutional. And after years of complying, Google has finally made it technically difficult—if not impossible—to provide mass location data in response to a geofence warrant.
This is an old story: if a company stores a lot of data about its users, law enforcement (and private litigants) will eventually seek it out. Law enforcement is already demanding user data from AI chatbot companies, and it will only increase. These companies must be prepared for this onslaught, and they must commit to fighting to protect their users.
In addition to minimizing the amount of data accessible to law enforcement, they can start with three promises to their users. These aren’t radical ideas. They are basic transparency and accountability standards to preserve user trust and to ensure constitutional rights keep pace with technology:
- commit to fighting bulk orders for user data in court,
- commit to providing users with advanced notice before complying with a legal demand so that users can choose to fight on their own behalf, and
- commit to publishing periodic transparency reports, which tally up how many legal demands for user data the company receives (including the number of bulk orders specifically).