USPTO Extends Deadline for Requesting Director Review of Patent Trial Institution Decisions

By Ferraiuoli LLC

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced on June 29, 2026, that it has extended the deadline for parties to request Director Review of decisions instituting patent trials, giving them more time to seek this internal review process.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) handles challenges to the validity of patents that have already been granted. One of the most common types of these challenges is called "inter partes review," or IPR, in which a party can ask the PTAB to reconsider whether a granted patent should have been issued in the first place.

Before an IPR case can move forward, the PTAB must first decide whether to "institute" it — essentially, whether there is enough merit in the challenge to open a formal trial. Once that decision is made, either party involved can ask the USPTO Director to review it, a mechanism known as Director Review. Until now, parties only had 14 days from the institution decision to file such a request, a tight window that left little room to prepare.

Under the new policy, that window has been extended to 30 days. The USPTO made the change by waiving the previous 14-day regulatory deadline, which was established under Title 37 of the Code of Federal Regulations. The extension follows a precedential decision issued on June 22, 2026, in a patent dispute between Light & Wonder, Inc. and Evolution Malta Ltd., a case that dealt specifically with the timing of Director Review requests.

The USPTO also noted that, in exceptional circumstances, it may grant even longer extensions beyond the new 30-day period — but only if the underlying trial has not yet "progressed meaningfully." Examples given by the agency include situations where a related court case has dismissed most or all of the relevant claims, where legal or factual findings elsewhere have already invalidated most of the challenged patent claims, or where one party has violated what's known as a "Sotera stipulation" — a commitment often made in parallel court litigation to avoid raising overlapping validity arguments in multiple venues at once.

For companies and patent holders operating internationally, particularly in patent-heavy industries like technology and gaming, this change offers more breathing room to evaluate whether to challenge a PTAB institution decision before a trial proceeds — a small but practical adjustment to how U.S. patent disputes are managed procedurally.