McCabe Ali’s Emil J Ali notes that a period of leadership flux at the USPTO hasplaced unusual scrutiny on the OED, with its next director poised to influenceeverything from practitioner admissions to how the agency responds to mountingconcerns over fraud, sanctions and proportionality in attorney discipline.
Since the beginning of 2025, the USPTO’s OED has been without a permanentdirector, with former OED Director Will Covey first being designated as the actingdeputy director of the USPTO, and now being formally named the USPTO’s CCO. InOctober 2025, the USPTO opened its recruitment for a new OED director, a role that stands to radically shape practitioner admissions, ethics enforcement, and disciplinary outcomes for years to come.