by Dennis Crouch

Director John Squires has been in office for about ten months, and the patent application allowance rate appears to be continuing its downward trend that began under Director Vidal.

A big caveat here is that our data ends in January 2026. The chart is keyed to office action rejections that lead to abandonment. But when an examiner mails a rejection, the applicant gets six months (three plus three under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)). Nothing is abandoned until that six-month period runs. So the curve above ends in January 2026, and the Squires portion of it is just four months.

The chart above updates the measure I introduced in March - which anchors each disposed application to the date of the examiner's last substantive action: the Notice of Allowance on one side and, on the other, the last rejection for cases later abandoned. See Dennis Crouch, The Third Way: Examiner Action Dates and the Allowance Rate Curve, Patently-O (Mar. 2, 2026).  I like to use this anchoring because it captures the moment the agency decides rather than the moment the paperwork catches up or the applicant takes action: this helps us zero in on patent office activity.

One additional note - I have refined the allowance calculation since March, which moved levels by about one percentage point in some areas, but the general shape of the curve is unchanged.