Iancu (PTO)

This entry is not a company. "Iancu (PTO)" is a case-caption placeholder, not an entity with operations. It refers to Andrei Iancu in his official capacity as Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the government official named as respondent/intervenor in Federal Circuit appeals from Patent Trial and Appeal Board decisions.

What the named party actually is. The USPTO is a federal agency headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, that examines and grants patents and trademarks and administers the PTAB. Per Iancu's own congressional testimony, it employs more than 12,000 people with an annual budget exceeding $3 billion. Iancu served as Director from February 2018 to January 2021, following a career as managing partner of Irell & Manella; he is now a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell. Directors change, and appeals are routinely re-captioned to the sitting Director.

Litigation posture. The single tracked appearance — one case, as defendant, zero as plaintiff — is structural, not a signal of NPE or operating-company status. Under 35 U.S.C. § 143, the Director may intervene in Federal Circuit appeals from PTAB proceedings, so the office appears whenever the Board's unpatentability findings are challenged. The count reflects that statutory role; there is no district-court venue pattern and no assertion activity by this party.

Notable case. PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Iancu, Nos. 2017-1362/-1363/-1364 (Fed. Cir. July 3, 2018), was an appeal from IPR2013-00340, -345 and -346 concerning PPC's coaxial-cable connector "continuity member" patents (U.S. Patents 8,313,353; 8,323,060; and related). The underlying dispute was PPC against Corning Optical Communications RF, which withdrew after settlement; the PTO intervened. The court vacated and remanded, faulting the Board's motivation-to-combine findings and its treatment of objective indicia such as copying and commercial success. Later appeals in the same patent family (e.g., Nos. 2024-1776 et seq.) are captioned against Amphenol Corp. rather than the Director, illustrating the caption substitution described above.