How Senator Tillis’ Patent Leadership Provides Path for Cementing Recent USPTO Action

About this episode

Eli Mazour interviews Peter-Anthony Pappas about the impact of Senator Tillis' leadership on recent USPTO actions and the future of patent legislation.

In the latest episode of Clause 8, recorded in December 2025, Eli Mazour sits down with Peter-Anthony Pappas , Director of Intellectual Property Policy for the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary under Senator Thom Tillis , at a moment when the USPTO’s direction is in significant alignment with what Senator Tillis and Senator Chris Coons have been working toward since reviving the Senate IP Subcommittee in 2019. Under new USPTO leadership, the agency has taken meaningful steps to strengthen patent rights over the last year—from significantly reining in the role of the PTAB in invalidating patents to bringing greater clarity to how Section 101 is applied within the USPTO. But as Peter-Anthony explains, while the steps taken by the agency are promising agency action alone is prone to change and limited to what happens at the USPTO. That’s where Senator Tillis comes in. Peter-Anthony walks through how PREVAIL and PERA will lock in much of the what the USPTO is doing and provide long-term certainty for innovators. The conversation explores the progress made last Congress, where the sticking points remain, and what it will take for the legislation to finally pass during Senator…

People in this episode

Host: Eli Mazour

Guest: Peter-Anthony Pappas

Topics covered

• patent rights
• USPTO actions
• legislation
• intellectual property
• Senate IP Subcommittee
• coalition building
• innovation

Keywords

• patent leadership
• USPTO
• Senator Tillis
• intellectual property policy
• legislation
• innovation
• PREVAIL
• PERA
• PTAB
• Section 101

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, USPTO, PTAB

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