John A. Squires is an American lawyer and senior government official serving as the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). He was confirmed by the United States Senate on September 18, 2025, and joined the USPTO later that month.
Education
Squires received a Bachelor of Science in chemistry, with a concentration in organic chemistry, from Bucknell University. He earned a Juris Doctor from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where he graduated magna cum laude and was a member of the law review and the Order of the Coif.
Career
Before joining the USPTO, Squires was a partner and chair of the intellectual property and emerging companies practice at Dilworth Paxson LLP. He also served as an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.
Squires previously served as chief intellectual property counsel at Goldman Sachs from 2000 to 2009. His earlier professional experience included work as an intellectual property attorney at Honeywell and at the law firms Chadbourne & Parke, Clifford Chance, Morgan & Finnegan, Perkins Coie, and Gibson Dunn.
USPTO director
President Donald Trump nominated Squires in March 2025 to serve as Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO. The Senate confirmed him on September 18, 2025, by a vote of 51–47 as part of an en bloc confirmation vote covering multiple executive nominations. The USPTO announced his arrival as director on September 22, 2025.
As director, Squires leads the USPTO, which issues patents and trademarks, advises the federal government on intellectual property policy, and oversees the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. In October 2025, Squires announced that he would personally determine whether the Patent Trial and Appeal Board should institute certain patent-validity reviews, taking over a responsibility that had previously been delegated to board judges.
In March 2026, Squires testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet during an oversight hearing on the USPTO. Reuters reported that lawmakers questioned him about the agency's trademark-related work connected to the Board of Peace and about possible conflicts affecting the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Squires defended the USPTO's actions, saying the trademark applications were filed to address national-security and cybersquatting concerns.
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