Name Names or Risk It All:
PTAB’s Real Party Shake-Up After SharkNinja

October 3, 2025

On September 26, 2025, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office quietly made one of its most consequential procedural moves in years: it de-designated SharkNinja Operating LLC v. iRobot Corp., IPR2020-00734 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 6, 2020), as precedential. That decision, issued at the height of the Trump administration and long treated as the touchstone for “real party in interest” (RPI) disputes, had sharply narrowed when the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) needed to resolve RPI questions—essentially, only when failure to name an RPI could trigger a one-year time bar under 35 U.S.C. § 315(b) or estoppel under § 315(e).

With its removal from the precedential canon, that bright-line guidance is gone. In its place is a far more ambiguous and potentially consequential landscape—one that revives old doctrinal debates, expands strategic opportunities for patent owners, and increases both risk and complexity for petitioners. The move marks not just a procedural shift but a reassertion of the Board’s discretion to scrutinize who really stands behind an IPR petition—and why that matters.

The Doctrinal Path to SharkNinja: From AIT to Ventex

The law of “real party in interest” has never been static, and the Board’s latest pivot is best understood in the context of its evolution over the last decade.

The Federal Circuit’s seminal decision in Applications in Internet Time, LLC v. RPX Corp., 897 F.3d 1336 (Fed. Cir. 2018) (“AIT”), was a watershed. There, the court vacated the PTAB’s institution decision because it had failed to adequately consider whether Salesforce—a major RPX client and the defendant in parallel litigation — was a real party in interest. Rejecting the Board’s formalistic approach, the Federal Circuit emphasized that the RPI inquiry turns on “practical realities,” including who directs or funds the petition and who stands to benefit from it. Id. at 1351–53. The court stressed that Congress intended § 312(a)(2), which requires petitioners to identify all RPIs to be a substantive safeguard, not a procedural nicety.

The PTAB followed with Ventex Co. v. Columbia Sportswear N. Am., Inc., IPR2017-00651, Paper 148 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 24, 2019) (precedential), further clarifying the test. There, the Board held that a supplier-customer relationship—particularly one involving indemnification obligations — could make the customer an RPI, even if it did not directly file the petition. The focus, the Board reiterated, is on whether a party “exercises control or could have exercised control over a petitioner’s participation” or “has a pre-existing, established relationship” such that it “stands to benefit” from the petition.

These decisions significantly raised the stakes of RPI disclosure. Petitioners faced the risk of dismissal if they failed to name an entity whose involvement crossed these functional thresholds. But they also left the PTAB grappling with how far it must go in investigating RPI disputes that might ultimately prove immaterial to the statutory bars.

It was that tension that SharkNinja sought to resolve. Confronted with a patent owner’s argument that the petitioner had failed to identify all RPIs, the Board concluded that it “need not resolve” that question unless the alleged omission implicated § 315(b)’s time bar or § 315(e)’s estoppel. SharkNinja, Paper 11 at 12–13. Citing the burdensome, fact-intensive nature of RPI inquiries, the Board reasoned that “cost and efficiency” favored limiting such analysis to circumstances where it would be outcome-determinative.

The USPTO’s September 2025 Pivot: A Broader View of RPI’s Role

By stripping SharkNinja of its precedential status, the USPTO has now disavowed that narrow approach. In a brief notice accompanying the decision, the Office stated that RPI disclosure serves “purposes other than time-bar and estoppel issues”—signaling that the Board may once again consider RPI disputes in a broader range of circumstances.

The timing of the move is noteworthy. It came just days after the Senate confirmed John Squires as Director, a former industry counsel known for advocating more rigorous procedural enforcement. It follows a broader institutional shift under Deputy Director Coke Morgan Stewart, who has emphasized early-stage “gatekeeping” and discretionary denials under § 314(a).

Those discretionary denials, rooted in Cuozzo Speed Techs., LLC v. Lee, 579 U.S. 261 (2016), and developed through the Board’s precedential Apple Inc. v. Fintiv, Inc., IPR2020-00019, Paper 11 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 20, 2020), allow the PTAB to decline institution for reasons unrelated to statutory bars — including parallel district court schedules, efficiency concerns, and patent owners’ “settled expectations.” In recent decisions, the Board has even denied review where a patent owner reasonably believed its patent would not be challenged, relying on equitable considerations rather than statutory mandates.

It is precisely in that discretionary-denial context that RPI issues could now take on new significance. If an unnamed entity knew of the challenged patent for years before the petition, that knowledge could undermine the petitioner’s narrative and support a “settled expectations” argument. If an undisclosed corporate parent or litigation funder is effectively directing the petition, the Board may question whether the proceeding serves IPR’s statutory purpose as an efficient alternative to litigation.

Strategic and Litigation Implications: A New Era of Risk

The removal of SharkNinja’s precedential status does not change the statute: petitioners are still required under § 312(a)(2) to identify all real parties in interest. But it does change the consequences of failure—from a correctable procedural defect to a potentially fatal flaw.

The Board could now deny institution outright upon finding that an unnamed entity is the true RPI, even if the omission has no bearing on § 315(b) or § 315(e). And because discretionary denials are not judicially reviewable, see Cuozzo, 579 U.S. at 273, petitioners may have little recourse if the Board invokes RPI concerns to decline review.

This shift also increases litigation risk beyond the PTAB. Patent owners may attempt to leverage RPI omissions to support collateral APA challenges in federal court, arguing that the Board’s decision to institute despite incomplete disclosures was arbitrary or capricious. Conversely, petitioners whose petitions are denied on RPI grounds may seek to challenge the Board’s interpretation of “real party in interest” — a term the Federal Circuit has acknowledged lacks a statutory definition and is “informed by common law principles.” AIT, 897 F.3d at 1351.

From a strategic perspective, petitioners must now approach RPI disclosure as a core part of petition preparation, not a compliance exercise. That means conducting comprehensive internal reviews to identify all entities with potential control or benefit, documenting the basis for inclusion or exclusion, and anticipating discovery requests designed to probe those relationships. Foreign petitioners, whose corporate structures often span multiple jurisdictions and layers of ownership, will face heightened diligence challenges.

Patent owners, meanwhile, should revisit how they deploy RPI arguments. What once was a narrow tool to challenge timeliness or estoppel may now be a potent weapon to press for denial under § 314(a), to seek additional discovery, or to shape settlement dynamics. They may also revisit arguments that entities like Unified Patents must name their member companies—arguments that historically failed under SharkNinja’s shadow but could find new life without it.

Policy Reflections: Efficiency vs. Integrity

Critics of the USPTO’s move argue that revoking SharkNinja’s precedential status will increase cost and complexity—forcing parties and the Board to litigate RPI disputes even where the outcome is unaffected. Alex Yap, a former PTAB judge, called SharkNinja “very well-reasoned” and warned that its removal “reopens everything again,” leading to burdensome discovery and evidentiary battles.

However, the Office’s recalibration reflects a deeper tension at the heart of IPR practice: the tradeoff between efficiency and integrity. Congress designed IPR to be a streamlined alternative to litigation, but it also imposed disclosure requirements precisely to prevent abuse of the system. By narrowing RPI inquiries, SharkNinja arguably privileged efficiency over accuracy—a balance the USPTO may now wish to revisit in light of evolving concerns about litigation funding, corporate opacity, and strategic petitioning.

This pivot also reflects a broader shift in administrative law. Agencies are increasingly willing to revisit and rescind precedents to align with policy priorities—a prerogative the Supreme Court affirmed in FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., 556 U.S. 502 (2009), so long as the agency acknowledges the change and provides a reasoned explanation. The USPTO’s invocation of “other purposes” may be just the beginning of a more robust policy statement on the role of RPI in safeguarding the integrity of PTAB proceedings.

Precision, Purpose, and the Post-SharkNinja PTAB

The USPTO’s quiet September announcement belies its significance. By stripping SharkNinja of precedential status, the agency has fundamentally reshaped the terrain of PTAB practice. Petitioners can no longer rely on a narrow reading of when RPI disputes matter; patent owners have new opportunities to contest petitions on procedural and discretionary grounds; and the Board has reclaimed a powerful tool for policing the integrity of its proceedings.

What emerges is a more uncertain, more complex, and potentially more adversarial IPR process—one in which precision and foresight are paramount. Petitioners must invest in robust RPI diligence and anticipate that omissions could prove fatal. Patent owners must scrutinize disclosures as part of a broader strategic toolkit that includes Fintiv-style arguments and equitable defenses. And both sides must prepare for an era in which the PTAB’s discretion — once narrowed by SharkNinja—is once again a central feature of the IPR landscape.

The era of the “SharkNinja safety net” is over. The era of real-party reckoning has begun.