ACT Urges Congress to Reclaim Oversight of USPTO’s PTAB Authority as Its Fee-Setting Authority Nears Expiration

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Morgan Reed, president of the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT), delivered testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet, calling on lawmakers not to renew the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) fee-setting authority without critical reforms needed to support American innovation and small businesses. 

Testifying at the “Renewal of USPTO Fee Setting Authority: Giving Full Effect to the America Invents Act” hearing, Reed argued that the agency’s overreach and increasingly restrictive patent quality review policies have broken trust with small innovators, making it increasingly difficult to challenge low-quality patents, ultimately pushing American capital toward foreign competitors.  

“When a patent, that shouldn’t have been issued, is granted the burden falls on U.S. small businesses, including manufacturers, who are forced to license or design around invalid claims that would never survive review, while capital flows straight out of the country to foreign entities in China. Unscrupulous filers are using AI to map existing patents and churn out look-alike, AI-slop filings by the thousands, making this the worst possible moment to abandon the America Invents Act’s patent review system designed to correct mistakes,” said Morgan Reed, president of ACT. “Our members can forgive a patent office that makes mistakes, but not an office that issues poor-quality patents, closes the door on correcting them, and keeps the $23,750 filing fee for telling us ‘no.’” 

To safeguard domestic innovators and restore integrity to the patent system, Reed urged Congress to condition the reauthorization of the USPTO’s fee-setting authority on strict structural reforms rather than reauthorizing it automatically. The USPTO’s own statistics show that the institution rate has fallen from roughly 65 percent in October 2024 to roughly 37 percent in February 2026. He warned that shutting the door on Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) reviews, right as AI floods the system, leaves real-world innovators defenseless.

ACT is calling on lawmakers to rein in the agency by imposing a firm time limit on its fee-setting powers, establishing statutory limits to curb arbitrary discretionary denials at the PTAB, requiring a fully appointed, functional Patent Public Advisory Committee (PPAC) to restore meaningful administrative oversight and accountability, and setting higher up-front fees for the largest filers by statute while preserving the discounts that keep the system open to small and micro entities. 

Read Morgan Reed’s full testimony online: Morgan Reed Testifies Before House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet | ACT  

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About the Association for Competitive Technology & Its Members

The Association for Competitive Technology is a global trade association for small and medium-sized technology companies. Our members are entrepreneurs, innovators, and independent developers within the global app ecosystem that engage with verticals across every industry. We work with our members to promote a policy environment that rewards and inspires innovation while providing resources that help them raise capital, create jobs, and continue to build incredible technology.

For more information, please visit www.actonline.org.