Remarks by Director Squires at the 2026 AIPLA Annual Meeting

Remarks as delivered

John A. Squires, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO

2026 Annual Meeting for the American Intellectual Property Law Association

Luncheon Keynote Address

Washington, D.C.

October 30, 2026

Thank you, Sal, for such a kind introduction.

It's great, always great, to be with fellow IP devotees, especially at your AIPLA annual conference, the granddaddy of them all.

Founded in 1897, 7,000 members and about 1,500 strong this year in D.C. I hear. That right, Sal? Well, at the risk of provoking a trademark infringement suit, one might say that is "Alright, Alright, Alright."

Such is the convening power of IP. Remarkable. Literally, voting with your feet to be here, to be together, and to work together to grow our nation's innovation juggernaut-a testament to the importance of IP protection- and now, more than ever.

Such is the convening power of IP, that of course, I wouldn't miss it, literally for the world. I thank you for the invitation and for pushing my address back to lunchtime so I could be with you, just back from an amazing convocation in Buenos Aires. Argentina is joining the global resurgence in IP, and we were joined by Spain and Denmark in putting on a global forum, a somewhat sua sponte coalition of the willing, which was an outgrowth of a conversation among office heads that we had at the Geneva WIPO General Assembly. Three short months later, we're rolling up our sleeves.

Let me start with a big thank you to Vince Garlock, your Executive Director, who has been so instrumental in every aspect of IP policy and law here in the nation's capital and throughout the country.

Vince was with us just last week at the USPTO, EPO, and JPO Tri-lateral, where we rolled up our sleeves to do something remarkable, finally, finally, finally getting WIPO on the doorstep to use a Global Assignment.

It took Tigers and Dragons and Turtles-don't worry, that will become clear-and industry to make clear the importance of operating at the speed of trade and the market. The Global Assignment is to be installed IP as infrastructure by June. We'll get it there, because Global Assignment in the marketplace means Global Agility. Our three offices are united and industry-resolute in our commitment and collaboration to see that this happens. I want WIPO to circle it on their calendar, mark the date, June 2027.

To the entire staff of the AIPLA, hat's off to you for all the work that is required to bring so many members of our community together in one place-and making elegance and engagement look effortless. Thank you.

And from America's Innovation Agency, thank you, AIPLA, for recognizing the outstanding Patent and Trademark examiners employed by our agency who are working for everyone in this room and tirelessly for American ingenuity-the best in the world at what they do-and they prove that every day. To have you, industry, and stakeholders recognize the best of the best-well, that means the most, and is truly heartfelt.

Their dedication to their profession is remarkable. Indeed a blessing in an ex parte system, and especially as the on-rush of technology gets increasingly complex and the demand crescendos for born strong and issued timely IP rights. Congratulations to all of today's recipients. Let's give them another round of applause.

Finally, to the thousands and thousands and thousands of AIPLA members, we are indebted to you for your commitment to your craft and your client's pursuits, doggedly and proudly directed to the success of our nation's innovators, creators, entrepreneurs, and leaders.

America's Innovation Agency is here for you and is here to help capture, optimize, and accelerate the protection of ingenuity and see to it that it moves into the real world.

Now, I'm especially energized to be with you today, because, you may not know this, but last year, at your annual meeting-the place to be in D.C. and right here right in this very room-was my very first public address following my confirmation as Under Secretary and Director. I chose of course, propitiously, AIPLA to be my first event-and what a year it's been, for every aspect, facet, nuance, side, jot, tittle, and layer that is our wonderful calling and profession.

Last year, in my address, I focused on the coming revolution in artificial intelligence-which we now call uper intelligence, or SI. Well, that revolution is here, and in a very determinative way, as I will explain. I believe that revolution is in and of us-all of us.

The speed and ferocity at which this transformative technology has-I want to say advanced but that doesn't capture it by any stretch-the words are exploded, consumed, creatively disrupted everything in its path-from frontier models to agentic systems, from the computational laboratory to increasingly autonomous real-world applications-it all has been breathtaking. As in taking your breath away. The sheer power, possibilities, and accelerating capabilities of super intelligence has amazed and continues to amaze, if we're being honest, all of us.

And at America's Innovation Agency, we welcome it. When you have the best in the world at what they do-and the best of the best that you recognized today, across every corner of technology, from shovels, to shaving, to SI, how can you not?

It spells opportunity, it spells transformation, it spells enhanced engagement. Because for us, SI portends a future in which American ingenuity is amplified, human judgment is elevated, and the promise of our country's innovation system-one like no other-promotes the progress of science and the useful arts, reaching more innovators, more swiftly and profoundly than ever.

So to that end, a year later, I'm going to forgo the year in review, look-back, KPI, metric thing of then and now.

You know many of our speeds and feeds by now. And you'll see them imminently and on full display in our forthcoming Annual Financial Report. We've done a yeoman's job and I'm really proud of our teams. As you know, we've gained a favorable toe-hold across all production and of operations-and SI is going to allow us to seize it. Our backlog is at a 3-year low, production throughput is outpacing intake-so the machinery is in place, and the productivity gains are beginning to take hold in real and measurable ways.

As to SI, we've had stellar adoption in patents, with our closed-circuit LLM SCOUT, and knocked the cover off the ball with agentic adoption in trademarks, taking months of administrivia down to seconds. And while we have much, much more to go, I believe you're really beginning to see the difference.

What I'd like to talk about instead regarding SI is what it's allowing us to do in terms of engagement-within the agency, nationally in terms of presence, and internationally in terms of what I'm terming infrastructure.

In all areas, SI is allowing us to re-engage with stakeholders, with trade, and with trade partners in a manner that elevates human engagement and personal interactions.

And as a technology, it's doing this because we finally have a tool, a mechanism, a configurable means to separate the administrative from the actionable, the ministerial from the meaningful.

So, what do I mean by that? And what does it mean writ-large for us, the "collective we?"

Well, when I talked about AI last year, I talked about its forcing function. The forcing function, of course, is the full-on contact of a powerful new and transcendent technology with the way things have always been done. The result? Re-engineering, re-wiring, re-thinking. In short, questioning everything.

Now, we're all IP professionals here, so as this new age rushes in, forcing us to re-imagine and question everything in its wake, everything in play, I know what you're thinking: "Is this heaven?"

And then when the reality hits home that none of this is actually all in hand yet, I can only think of the answer given by Kevin Costner's character in Field of Dreams, "No, it's Iowa…"

I'll let that sink in.

Now, as I began my talk just a few minutes ago, I mentioned the extraordinary convening power of intellectual property. You know, this thing that's drawn 1,500 of us together, right here, right now . . .

Let's drill down a little bit.

What is it-about intellectual property-that brings together scientists and entrepreneurs, universities and investors, businesses and governments, and increasingly entire nations, with such common purpose and focus?

I think the answer is that intellectual property sits at the very intersection of innovation and economic opportunity. Or at least surfaces the question of what opportunity does the system provide for the invention to have real uptake in the real economy?

IP provides both a rubric and a common language that both the scientist can speak in terms of his or her discovery and the entrepreneur can understand when it comes to economic opportunity. It allows the investor to begin to understand IP as an asset, the manufacturer or provider to understand it as a product or service, and more broadly, ultimately as something that may have enhanced societal value.

And that common language gets projected beyond America's borders and I would say even America's generations.

Across the world, our USPTO delegation saw it just this week in Buenos Aires in full view, where conversations that began as a bare idea among four patent offices at WIPO in July became an extraordinary international convention only three months later.

The week before, the USPTO, JPO, and EPO convened our annual Trilateral and focused almost exclusively on our global assignment work, where the shared interests of innovators, investors, industry, and IP offices rolled up our sleeves, collectively and finally, instead of talking about it.

Specifically, and with some dispatch, we collaboratively moved to improve infrastructure and reduce bureaucracy where intellectual property flows and is effectuated internationally as to goods and services it covers.

And fundamentally, we saw it-and I dare say the member delegates seized it-at the Innovation G20 in Chapel Hill, where countries with vastly different economic interests, backgrounds, and legal systems around the world came together, shook hands, and adopted principles designed to facilitate innovation, investment, and commercialization.

Such is the convening power of IP.

But there's more.

There's also an instigation power.

In all these convocations, when the meetings concluded, the conversations had just begun, as did the work- leading to future and further cooperation. To new relationships. To real, practical bring-downs and institutional change.

So now, when you put together the convening power of IP with the extraordinary forcing function that is SI, that is the inflection point we're at.

Because as technology accelerates, it compels us to reconsider how we've always done things, while providing a new lens and the impetus to re-engineer, rewire, and reimagine ways to do them better.

But to do WHAT better?

In certain systems and workflows-and in the digital intensive world that is IP-there's also the rather unique opportunity to elevate and enhance human interactions, because for the first time there exists a tool to separate the ministerial from the substance. And Lord knows, as our IP system has developed over the last 200+ years, there are oodles and oodles of administrivia.

How many times in filing an application do you get objections as to form, as to the supporting format underlying the claims being prosecuted, the registration to be won?

What if we free-up the best in the world at what they do-who see the technology and innovations before the market does in many cases-and who are charged with finding the line with where the inventive contribution kicks in and the public interest leaves-what if we alleviate the burdensome form in favor of substance? That is a win-win, because we can get to the heart of the matter sooner, with greater confidence, and leave behind a cleaner record.

It elevates engagement, elevates substance over form for examiner and examining attorney interaction with applicants. It is human to human, enhanced and supported by tools, trails, and transparency so that we mutually arrive at the right place.

I believe this completely re-invigorates and allows for renewed confidence in our ex parte system. It allows for it because, after all, we're not adversaries-we're both interested in properly defining and conferring rights in what we both agree is the new and the next, leaving public reliance on what's already passed to it, intact.

That is an elevating function and it sits, ripely, for the taking, at the intersection of SI and the convening power of IP. It is this that allows for re-engagement, and the refreshment of relationships, as well as the creation of new ones, systemically, like never before.

And that's exactly what we're doing at the USPTO, intra-agency, extra-agency, and as a matter of companion global infrastructure to the real economy.

So, I want to talk about re-engagement in those respects.

I'll start with this year because America's 250th has provided a unique and remarkable opportunity for re-engagement with our past.

President George Washington, of course, signed America's very first patent in 1790 and, numbered sequentially, I will proudly present to President Trump U.S. Patent No. 13 million at some point next summer and U.S. Trademark Registration 9 million around the same time.

And then there's everything along the way. I started my tenure with Samuel Morse, invoking his patent and Claim 5 to the dot and dash schema that was his transmissible alphabet, when I signed the first two patents of my tenure as a reminder that eligibility is still good law. And, by the way, a bit of a PSA here-he's there, peeking over your shoulder with every SMED-which I encourage you to file.

We celebrated Alexander Graham Bell, and the 150th anniversary of his telephone patent this year as well. With it, we got a firsthand reminder that without his patent there would be no telecommunications industry as we know it, even now.

We retold the story of Henry Bessemer as an amazing reminder of his steelmaking technology crossing the Atlantic, and American patents, engineering, investment, and with real economy uptake transforming the infrastructure of America.

And the Wright Brothers spirit from Kitty Hawk not only infused the G-20 innovation delegation we had in nearby Chapel Hill, but also sparked delegates from around the globe to shake each other's hands and agree to the Carolina Principles.

Operationally, engagement by, between and through the office literally threw the office for a LOOP-and I mean that in the most positive sense. Our LOOP program, which was first a concept I articulated at my June Confirmation hearing in 2024, turned into one of the most successful pieces of infrastructure the office has ever had in connecting the PTAB learnings from the back end to the examining corps at the front end to improve quality.

Proudly, through LOOP-Learning from Outcomes to Optimize Patents-and full credit to Kal Deshpande for coming up with such a great moniker-we created an internal information super-highway connecting our judges and examining corps, particularly our supervisory patent examiners, so that lessons from actual proceedings can inform future examination.

And what's been remarkable is the response. More than 4,200 hours of live training, with 86 percent of participants reporting that what they've learned helps them in their daily work. Daily work.

So, forcing function plus convening power equals now the wired connection between two extraordinary reservoirs of professional expertise, and the result is a more informed, more capable, continuously improving institution.

We're engaged like never before. One Office-and a whole-office-shared commitment to getting it right for innovation to be born strong, registered confidently, and gain marketplace confidence.

In terms of stakeholder engagement, elevation has meant tools like ASAP, bringing potentially relevant prior art into view earlier; COMPASS, developed with our own professionals to improve the review of complex biological sequence submissions; and KAT, through which we're testing agentic capabilities in pre-examination processes-literally separating the form from the substance. Stay tuned especially on KAT-that is the one to watch. We should be flipping the switch in January.

What these tools represent for our examiners, examining attorneys, and you, as stakeholders, is our increasing ability to separate, again, the administrivia from the actionable, the ministerial from the meaningful, form from substance. And in so doing, it allows our professionals to devote more of their extraordinary expertise to the legal and technical judgments that matter, and to navigate the system that substantively matters.

Examiners lead. Tools support. American Ingenuity Wins.

Let's talk more human engagement.

I've imbedded this mindset operationally across both policy and production by creating a Chief Super Intelligence Officer position, reporting directly to me.

And as you saw, I'm delighted to have announced Jonathan Spencer joining us in this role, previously from Waymo, with his remarkable experience bringing advanced intelligent systems into real-world operation. I invite you to get to know Jonathan. He is an asset to the office, which means he's an asset for you.

In Patents, many of you have met our irresistible force of both stakeholder and vendor partner engagement, Barry Schindler. I'd invite you to get to know Barry, but you don't need an invitation-if you haven't met Barry, you will. He will come find you.

For those of you of a certain age, Barry is one part Phil Donahue, one part Energizer Bunny-and in all respects patents, patents, patents. And what force he's brought to this effort.

Front and center, we have re-engaged to make stakeholders and vendor partners part of the build and operation of the institution, bringing the experience of the marketplace into the process of making the Office better in every respect.

Re-engagement has also meant re-imagining the physical presence of and access to our agency.

Increasingly, I want you to think of us less as the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and more as the United States Patent and Trademark System.

Through our growing Regional Office and community engagement footprint, I want us to be a system present, accounted for, and fully engaged across America's dynamic, robust, and vibrant innovation economy.

With our re-imagined community engagement footprint, you'll see USPTO blue and white in New Hampshire, Montana, Utah, North Carolina, and Florida, and as part of the HBCU system, including the extraordinary Atlanta University Center ecosystem and Alabama A&M University in Huntsville. We want to be everywhere we can be closer to the researchers, the entrepreneurs, the startups, and the technology-transfer professionals-your members-who are right now defining the future of American ingenuity.

And because engagement runs in both directions, our institution will become better informed, more agile, and more accessible where it matters most and when it matters most.

That is not only what I envision when I talk about the United States Patent and Trademark System-it's what we're in fact building-an agency whose reach and relationships reflect the extraordinary breadth, vitality, and nuances of American ingenuity-that manifest in local innovation communities.

And of course, that brings us back to the international dimension with which I began today.

Vienna. Buenos Aires. WIPO. The G20 Carolina Principles. The intellectual property rights we issue operate in an increasingly interconnected global economy, supporting investment, technology transfer, and trade. And our responsibility to American ingenuity includes ensuring American issued assets are more translated, transactable, liquid, if you will, but ultimately respected wherever they flow into the global stream of commerce.

Indeed, from a global perspective, done right, innovation systems are de facto infrastructure. And the more effectively that infrastructure inter-connects, the greater the real economy value.

So, whether we're connecting our judges and examiners intra-office, connecting our Office to emerging innovation ecosystems across America extra-office, or connecting national IP systems to improve the fluidity of innovation internationally, the underlier is the same-engagement.

Engagement via the convening power of intellectual property is amplified by the forcing function of SI to create connectivity, allowing more productivity, more responsiveness, and better and more predictable outcomes than ever before.

And here's what's most exciting. Each of these aspects strengthens and complements one another-and at the human engagement level.

Indeed, what we learn from our own professionals, individually and systemically, informs how we engage with applicants. What we learn from stakeholders improves how we operate. What we learn from our communities helps shape how we serve American ingenuity in whatever shape, form, or instance it manifests. And, across the globe, our relationships give us a line of sight with which to understand and improve the infrastructure through which the hard-won assets we award flow.

And the process is ever ongoing engagement, learning, improvement, and outcomes. And the best part is, we're at the very doorstep, the first chapter, the early innings…

So let me close where I began.

A year ago, right here at this very podium, I was honored to speak to you about a revolution hurtling at us, full tilt.

Well, it's here, with the urgency of now in all its forcing function glory. And we're meeting head on, thoughtfully and aspirationally, with the convening power of IP. And what we've been thereby presented with is the opportunity-and, I believe, it's a non-recurring opportunity at that-for elevation of the practice interactions.

This is an opportunity for us to have even more robust and meaningful engagement-if that's the path we choose.

And in so choosing, look at the relationships it allows us to strengthen. The expertise it allows us to bring together. The workflows we can reimagine to unlock us to do the substance, in a supervisory, managerial way. And the extraordinary possibilities that it provides to shape the future.

If the forcing function causes us to question it all and a robust rethink, then the convening power of intellectual property allows us to come together and elevate our engagement and interactions to accomplish what we couldn't alone.

For our part, at America's Innovation Agency, your agency-we're building an institution that learns from its experience, engages with the people and communities it serves, and works with international partners to strengthen the infrastructure of innovation.

And we're doing it with the people in this room, across AIPLA's remarkable membership, and I want our partnership to become even stronger.

As we celebrate America's 250th anniversary, it's worth reflecting on the extraordinary foresight of our Founders in establishing a system capable of supporting inventions they could never have imagined.

Now, 250 years later, we have the privilege of strengthening that system for a future we can scarcely imagine ourselves.

And what an extraordinary opportunity.

So we're here. We're ready. And we're re-engaged on virtually every front.

We're building the Innovation Agency of the future, together, by, with, and for the people who depend upon it, contribute to it, and ultimately benefit from it.

The future of American ingenuity is occurring every day. Together, in our shared calling, let's engage and give it shape so it sustains the innovation yet to come, and our beneficiaries 250 years from now will look back and say it's remarkable the foresight we had delivering the system they've inherited and improved with the same passion, focus, and commitment, together.

Thank you!

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