Q1 2025 Reexam Update: The Post-Sotera Surge Begins

Q1 2025 ex parte reexamination filings closed above the 2024 quarterly baseline. The bigger story is timing: on February 28, 2025, USPTO Acting Director Stewart rescinded the June 2022 Vidal Fintiv memo that had treated Sotera Stipulations as foreclosing discretionary IPR denial, and her follow-on interim Fintiv-evaluation guidance issued on March 26, 2025. (Why this matters for the reexam-vs-IPR calculus.) The Q1 numbers therefore capture only the first weeks of the post-rescission equilibrium. Q2, now closing, will be the first full quarter of the new procedural environment, and the early signal is unambiguous: filing pace has accelerated.

What the Q1 data shows

Filings through Q1 2025 ran above the comparable Q1 2024 level. Two interpretive frames apply:

• Pre-rescission baseline drift. The procedure has been climbing modestly year-over-year since 2020. Some of the Q1 increase is consistent with that trend.
• Post-rescission initial diversion. The final weeks of the quarter saw filing-rate increases that would be unexpected on the prior baseline alone. Multiple firm alerts in April attributed the late-Q1 acceleration to the Vidal-memo rescission.

The composition of the Q1 cohort is also telling. Third-party filings tracked above the historical third-party share, consistent with the displacement thesis. The early movers in the post-Sotera environment are precisely the challenger population that would have filed IPRs on the same patents through 2024.

Looking ahead to Q2

Three things will be visible in the Q2 data once it closes:

First, the magnitude of the diversion. If filings hold at the late-Q1 pace through Q2, the annual run rate would substantially exceed 2024's 330 filings. The size of the gap between the pre- and post-Sotera baseline is the central measure of the change.

Second, the third-party share. The Q1 mix already showed an above-historical third-party concentration. Q2 will reveal whether this is a temporary mover advantage or a structural shift in who uses the procedure.

Third, the patent profile. Are the patents being challenged in Q1-Q2 2025 reexams the same patents that would have been IPR targets? Cross-referencing reexam filings against contemporaneous district court litigation will indicate whether the substitution is direct (same patents, same defendants) or merely correlative.

What practitioners are doing in real time

The April-May practitioner response has been to plan for sustained higher volume. Firms with established IPR practices have built parallel reexam playbooks through Q2: accelerated request templates, examiner-pattern analyses, patent owner statement guidelines tuned to the volume of new filings. The institutional rethink is happening at speed.

For patent owners with portfolios that have previously been IPR targets, the operational concern is timing. A patent that was a likely IPR target in 2025 has just become a more likely ex parte reexam target. The defensive posture is procedurally different, no inter partes participation, no PTAB final written decision, but the underlying invalidity exposure is comparable.

A first equilibrium reading

The Q1 data is too early to call. The Q2 data, when it lands in July, will be the first clean post-Sotera reading. The expectation in practitioner circles is that the new equilibrium will sit materially above the pre-Sotera baseline. The question is how much.

Three months after the Sotera rescission, what was a forecast question in March has become a measurement question. The data will be the answer.