Fifty-one proceedings in March 2026. The number alone is the first signal worth reading.
By the time these petitions were filed, Director Squires had centralized institution decisions, removed diagnostic reasoning from summary denials, and presided over an institution rate that bottomed near zero in the October-November 2025 window. The practitioners who filed in March knew all of this. They filed anyway, which means the more instructive question is not what the current framework costs petitioners. It is what calculation fifty-one of them made that the others didn’t.
The March 11 manufacturing memorandum sharpened that question considerably. It has been read almost universally as a new petitioner burden, a supply chain disclosure requirement grafted onto a § 314(a) analysis that was already unfavorable. That reading is correct and incomplete. The same memo handed domestic patent owners an affirmative institution argument with no prior analog in PTAB practice. How many have restructured their discretionary briefing around it is a different question entirely.
March 2026’s docket is not a record of who survived a hostile environment. It is a record of who read it differently than everyone else.
The March 11 Memorandum: A New Axis of Risk
In March 2026, a significant development occurred when Director Squires issued a memorandum on March 11, introducing U.S. manufacturing presence as an important factor in patent reviews.
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This memo instructs the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to consider three key points when deciding whether to proceed with an Inter Partes Review (IPR) or a Post-Grant Review (PGR):
1. How much of the product in question is made in the United States.
2. Whether the patent owner’s competing products are also produced domestically.
3. If the petitioner is a small business that has faced a lawsuit for patent infringement.
The policy rationale is rooted not in patent doctrine but in national security and economic studies. As per Ballard Spahr’s analysis, the Director cited a USPTO study of high-volume PTAB filers, noting that many of the most frequent petitioners are large companies with no meaningful domestic manufacturing presence and that offshoring has continued unabated during the 15 years IPR and PGR have been available. The memo’s preamble frames this as a question of whether the current institutional framework appropriately serves entities that invest in domestic production.
“The road to institution at the PTAB has again gotten a little more complicated, and the conversation now extends well beyond the merits of patentability.” – National Law Review, Domestic Industry Comes to PTAB
Morgan Lewis has noted that the memo applies immediately to all pending proceedings in which the patent owner’s discretionary brief deadline has not yet elapsed, thereby affecting a wide range of cases at once, including many filed before March 11. Practitioners familiar with the ITC’s domestic industry requirement under 19 U.S.C. § 1337(a) will recognize the structural parallel: supply chain geography, previously irrelevant to PTAB practice, now belongs in the record.
The implications run in both directions.
For petitioners, particularly large technology companies with global manufacturing footprints, the memo imposes an evidentiary burden requiring early coordination among legal, operations, and finance to establish a domestic manufacturing narrative for discretionary briefing.
Crowell & Moring warns that parties should not assume a favorable domestic posture guarantees institution; these are discretionary factors, not categorical rules. For patent owners with U.S. production ties, the memo offers a new, supply-chain-grounded argument against an institution that did not exist before March 2026.
Cases That Define the Month
AI Voice Technology · 5 Proceedings (3 IPR + 2 PGR)
Krisp Technologies v. Sanas.AI: The Competitive IPR as Counter-Weapon
Krisp Technologies filed five proceedings against Sanas.AI, challenging patents at the center of active Northern District of California litigation that Sanas.AI initiated in July 2025. Krisp now holds both an infringement countersuit against Sanas and a five-front invalidity campaign at the PTAB against Sanas’s core IP.
Sanas’s complaint alleges that Krisp approached it in 2021 under an NDA, obtained knowledge of its technology during partnership discussions, terminated those discussions in November 2022, and filed its own patent applications months later.
Sanas seeks co-inventorship declarations, injunctive relief, and damages. Krisp disputes the account entirely, asserting independent development and characterizing Sanas’s suit as competitive harassment. In February 2026, a California court declined to dismiss Sanas’s claims at the pleading stage. Krisp acknowledged this but noted that the ruling simply advances the case into discovery, thereby framing the factual narrative in a way favorable to its position.
The PTAB filings, three IPRs and two PGRs, against five distinct Sanas patents represent a dual-track defense: simultaneously contesting the district court claims on the merits while attacking the patents’ validity at the Board.
With the March 11 manufacturing memo now in effect, Sanas, as a U.S.-based innovator and patent owner, may raise domestic industry arguments in its discretionary briefing. Whether the PTAB weighs those arguments against the legitimate merits challenge will be one of the early tests of how the new factors function in contested AI patent disputes.
Mobility / Gig Economy · 5 IPR Proceedings
Uber Technologies v. Carma Technology: Foundational Ridesharing IP Under Challenge
On March 12, Uber filed IPRs against five Carma Technology patents in a single coordinated batch, the same five patents at the center of Carma’s Eastern District of Texas lawsuit filed in January 2025.
Carma, founded in 2007 originally as Avego, built one of the early smartphone-based carpooling platforms and holds patents on the fundamental mechanics of matching riders with available vehicle capacity along shared routes. The first patent in the family, U.S. Patent No. 7,840,427, was applied for in 2007 and granted in 2010, predating Uber’s founding.
What makes this batch filing significant beyond its size is the vintage of the challenged patents. Several of the asserted Carma patents are well over a decade old. Under the “settled expectations” doctrine that Acting Director Stewart formalized in 2025 and Director Squires has applied, older patents attract heightened scrutiny of whether the challenger had knowledge of the patent and delayed its challenge.
GreyB’s 2026 practitioner analysis notes that the six-year threshold has become a critical checkpoint: patent families with members that old risk discretionary denial before the art is ever reviewed. Uber’s petitions will need to navigate that threshold directly, particularly given that Carma lawyers first contacted Uber about the ridesharing patents in 2016.
For the broader gig economy, the outcome carries precedential weight. Legal observers have noted that a patent owner prevailing on foundational ride-matching IP could embolden similar claims by early-stage innovators against platform companies that scaled on adjacent technology without licensing agreements.
Biologics / Biosimilar · 4 IPR Proceedings
Accord Biopharma v. Janssen Biotech, Golimumab’s BPCIA Path Under PTAB Pressure
The most texturally complex set of March 2026 proceedings sits at the intersection of the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act and the IPR system.
On March 20, Accord Biopharma, Intas Pharmaceuticals, and Bio-Thera Solutions filed four IPRs challenging four Janssen Biotech patents covering methods of treatment with golimumab, the active antibody in Janssen’s SIMPONI and SIMPONI ARIA.
The timing is direct: Janssen filed its BPCIA district court complaint in Delaware on March 3, alleging infringement of 17 patents related to the biosimilar BAT2506, which Accord is commercializing, and Bio-Thera is developing under a February 2025 licensing agreement.
The petitioners’ argument for invalidity relies significantly on publicly available clinical trial data. They contend that two of the four challenged patents are either anticipated or made obvious by Janssen’s own clinical trial protocol, NCT02181673-V23, which has been accessible on ClinicalTrials.gov since January 8, 2016. This is supported by the existing labels for SIMPONI and SIMPONI ARIA from 2013 and 2015, as well as Phase III reports and international patent publications.
In recent years, the use of ClinicalTrials.gov as a reference for prior art has gained popularity in inter partes reviews (IPRs) related to the Biologics Control and Innovation Act (BPCIA). Biosimilar challengers are increasingly recognizing that publicly registered trial protocols often provide detailed descriptions of treatment methods that can invalidate later method-of-treatment patents.
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Pharma / Drug Delivery · 3 IPR Proceedings
Merck Sharp & Dohme v. Halozyme, Keytruda’s Subcutaneous Future on the Line
Merck’s three March 2026 IPR filings against Halozyme’s MDASE patents, US11041149, US11066656, and US10865400, are the latest move in a multi-front dispute over the subcutaneous formulation of Keytruda that has been generating attention since early 2025. The underlying commercial question is stark: Keytruda’s base patents expire in 2028, and the subcutaneous version, developed in collaboration with South Korean firm Alteogen, carries method-of-treatment and manufacturing claims potentially extending exclusivity to 2042. Halozyme asserts that formulation uses its proprietary MDASE hyaluronidase enzyme technology.
Halozyme sued Merck for infringement in New Jersey in April 2025. Merck’s PTAB petitions challenge the validity of MDASE patents that Halozyme describes as a separate IP body distinct from its established ENHANZE licensing program. As per Halozyme’s April 2025 press release, the disputed MDASE rights do not affect existing ENHANZE licensees, including Roche, Pfizer, Takeda, and Janssen. That separation matters procedurally: it narrows Halozyme’s exposure in one direction while concentrating it in another.
Halozyme’s general counsel has publicly stated that the challenged patents are not subject to the challenge Merck has presented, and that the company hopes for a licensing resolution. That preference for licensing over litigation is not unusual in pharma PTAB disputes, but it now runs against the Squires-era calculation.
Under the new manufacturing framework, Halozyme, as a U.S.-based biotech with domestic production and licensing activities, has a plausible argument that its manufacturing footprint weighs against institution. Merck, while it manufactures domestically, faces a Board increasingly attentive to settled expectations regarding patents filed beginning in 2011.
Mobile Technology / NPE · 1 IPR Proceeding
Google v. Headwater Research: Android’s Push Notification Architecture Under Renewed Challenge
Google’s March 27 IPR petition against Headwater Research’s US9491564 continues one of the most consequential patent campaigns in the mobile technology space. Headwater, founded by inventor Gregory Raleigh, has prosecuted an expansive patent assertion strategy targeting mobile device data management across Google, Samsung, Amazon, Apple, and the major wireless carriers.
An Eastern District of Texas jury returned a $278.8 million verdict for Headwater in a case against Samsung. In February 2026, Headwater filed a new Northern California complaint directly against Google, targeting Firebase Cloud Messaging, characterizing FCM as the mechanism by which Google binds the Android ecosystem to its advertising platform.
The Google-Headwater PTAB filing is part of a pattern: Google has filed parallel IPRs on Headwater patents in multiple dockets, using PTAB proceedings to complement its district-court invalidity arguments. The operative risk under the current PTAB regime is that Headwater’s most recent filings, including the February 2026 Northern California complaint against Google itself, create a proximity-to-trial problem under Fintiv that Squires’s discretionary framework amplifies.
Cases against the carrier defendants are already at advanced stages, and the Board has previously denied institution on at least one Headwater-related petition from another defendant. The March 2026 petition must be structured to address that record directly.
Recurring Patterns Across March’s Docket
Batch Filing as Litigation Posture
The most visible pattern in March 2026 is the coordinated filing of multiple petitions against a single patent owner. Krisp filed five proceedings against Sanas on three distinct filing dates in March. Uber filed five IPRs in a single batch on March 12. Accord and its co-petitioners filed four IPRs on March 20.
Google filed four IPRs against Accusearch Technologies across three filing dates. The pattern reflects a deliberate campaign structure: each petition targets a separate patent, covering independent legal ground, reducing the risk that a single adverse institution decision forecloses all invalidity arguments.
This strategy has become more intentional in the Squires era.
GreyB’s practitioner intelligence notes that the dual-track IPR/ex parte reexamination approach has gained traction as a hedge: the IPR carries the complex §103 obviousness analysis, while a concurrently filed EPR on §102 or double-patenting grounds operates on a separate timeline and does not trigger the estoppel provisions of 35 U.S.C. § 315(e).
The two proceedings attack on different grounds and in different forums, and cannot both be neutralized by a single licensing resolution.
The Claim Construction Consistency Requirement
One of the most operationally significant doctrinal developments of the current PTAB era is the Director’s December 2025 precedential decision in Revvo Technologies v. Cerebrum Sensor Technologies, which clarified that a petitioner cannot simply adopt the patent owner’s district court claim construction in an IPR petition without explanation.
The construction applied in the IPR and in the co-pending district court case must be the same, or the petitioner must explain the divergence. For petitions like the Uber batch, where Carma’s patents are simultaneously being construed in the Eastern District of Texas, this creates a record-alignment requirement that shapes how claims must be characterized from the outset.
The Pharmaceutical Dual-Track Pattern
Both the Merck/Halozyme and Accord/Janssen disputes follow the same structural template: a BPCIA or standard infringement action in district court, followed within weeks by PTAB petitions challenging the asserted patents’ validity.
This is the standard biosimilar and pharmaceutical generic playbook, but its execution in 2026 requires mapping against the new discretionary framework much earlier than in prior years. Under Director Squires’s personal institution review, summary notices may arrive without substantive reasoning, leaving petitioners without diagnostic feedback to improve their petitions. In pharmaceutical disputes where timing relative to FDA approval windows matters enormously, institutional denial without explanation is not merely a procedural setback; it is a commercial one.
NPE Portfolio Campaigns and the Settled Expectations Trap
The presence of Headwater Research, Accusearch Technologies, K.Mizra LLC, Cogmedia LLC, and Carma Technology in March’s docket reflects the sustained use of PTAB proceedings as a counter-assertion tool against non-practicing entities and IP monetization vehicles.
But the settled expectations doctrine, introduced under Acting Director Stewart and preserved by Squires, has made older NPE portfolios increasingly difficult to attack at the Board. Jones Day’s statistical analysis found that settled expectations favored patent owners in 60% of discretionary denials during the Interim Era.
For portfolios where the patents were issued six or more years ago and the patent owner has been publicly licensing or enforcing them, the threshold for overcoming discretionary denial has risen materially.
The March 11 manufacturing memo applies retroactively to all pending proceedings where the patent owner’s discretionary brief deadline has not yet elapsed. Parties with active proceedings need to assess their domestic manufacturing posture now, not at the time of future filings.
The Prior Art Problem No One Is Talking About Loudly Enough
The PTAB has become less accessible at a time when the quality of invalidity cases is more important than ever. Under the previous system, a 67% institution rate allowed for broader and more exploratory searches of prior art. A petition based on a plausible combination, even one with some gaps, had a fair chance of advancing to trial. The Board would assess the merits, and any weaknesses would come to light during the proceedings.
However, this diagnostic function of the PTAB, serving as a venue to test and refine invalidity arguments, has largely diminished. Summary notices now provide no reasoning, leaving no criteria for evaluation.
What replaced it is a system where the petition must be correct before it is filed. The prior art must be genuinely exhaustive, not scoped around claim language, but built from the invention’s actual technical history, including conference proceedings, product lineage, and inventor networks that standard patent databases do not index.
The six-year settled-expectations threshold must be mapped against every patent in the family before a search begins. If the patents relevant to your lawsuit were issued more than five years ago, have co-pending litigation, or sit in a technology field where the decisive prior art exists outside conventional patent databases, the scope and methodology of the invalidity search deserves a direct conversation.
Fill out the form below to have the invalidity experts begin with the patent, map the applicable discretionary risk factors, and determine whether a viable challenge path still exists under the current institutional framework.