Category: 3. Business

A functioning patent system depends on one basic principle: bad patents must be challengeable. In 2025, that principle was repeatedly tested—by Congress, by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and by a small number of large patent owners determined to weaken public challenges. 

Two damaging bills, PERA and PREVAIL, were reintroduced in Congress. At the same time, USPTO attempted a sweeping rollback of inter partes review (IPR), one of the most important mechanisms for challenging wrongly granted patents. 

EFF pushed back—on Capitol Hill, inside the Patent Office, and alongside thousands of supporters who made their voices impossible to ignore.

Congress Weighed Bills That Would Undo Core Safeguards

The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act, or PERA, would overturn the Supreme Court’s Alice and Myriad decisions—reviving patents on abstract software ideas, and even allowing patents on isolated human genes. PREVAIL, introduced by the same main sponsors in Congress, would seriously weaken the IPR process by raising the burden of proof, limiting who can file challenges, forcing petitioners to surrender court defenses, and giving patent owners new ways to rewrite their claims mid-review.

Together, these bills would have dismantled much of the progress made over the last decade. 

We reminded Congress that abstract software patents—like those we’ve seen on online photo contests, upselling prompts, matchmaking, and scavenger hunts—are exactly the kind of junk claims patent trolls use to threaten creators and small developers. We also pointed out that if PREVAIL had been law in 2013, EFF could not have brought the IPR that crushed the so-called “podcasting patent.” 

EFF’s supporters amplified our message, sending thousands of messages to Congress urging lawmakers to reject these bills. The result: neither bill advanced to the full committee. The effort to rewrite patent law behind closed doors stalled out once public debate caught up with it. 

Patent Office Shifts To An “Era of No”

Congress’ push from the outside was stymied, at least for now. Unfortunately, what may prove far more effective is the push from within by new USPTO leadership, which is working to dismantle systems and safeguards that protect the public from the worst patents.

Early in the year, the Patent Office signaled it would once again lean more heavily on procedural denials, reviving an approach that allowed patent challenges to be thrown out basically whenever there was an ongoing court case involving the same patent. But the most consequential move came later: a sweeping proposal unveiled in October that would make IPR nearly unusable for those who need it most.

2025 also marked a sharp practical shift inside the agency. Newly appointed USPTO Director John Squires took personal control of IPR institution decisions, and rejected all 34 of the first IPR petitions that came across his desk. As one leading patent blog put it, an “era of no” has been ushered in at the Patent Office. 

The October Rulemaking: Making Bad Patents Untouchable

The USPTO’s proposed rule changes would: 

• Force defendants to surrender their court defenses if they use IPR—an intense burden for anyone actually facing a lawsuit. 
• Make patents effectively unchallengeable after a single prior dispute, even if that challenge was limited, incomplete, or years out of date.
• Block IPR entirely if a district court case is projected to move faster than the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). 

These changes wouldn’t “balance” the system as USPTO claims—they would make bad patents effectively untouchable. Patent trolls and aggressive licensors would be insulated, while the public would face higher costs and fewer options to fight back. 

We sounded the alarm on these proposed rules and asked supporters to register their opposition. More than 4,000 of you did—thank you! Overall, more than 11,000 comments were submitted. An analysis of the comments shows that stakeholders and the public overwhelmingly oppose the proposal, with 97% of comments weighing in against it. 

In those comments, small business owners described being hit with vague patents they could never afford to fight in court. Developers and open-source contributors explained that IPR is often the only realistic check on bad software patents. Leading academics, patient-advocacy groups, and major tech-community institutions echoed the same point: you cannot issue hundreds of thousands of patents a year and then block one of the only mechanisms that corrects the mistakes.

The Linux Foundation warned that the rules “would effectively remove IPRs as a viable mechanism” for developers.

GitHub emphasized the increased risk and litigation cost for open-source communities.

Twenty-two patent law professors called the proposal unlawful and harmful to innovation.

Patients for Affordable Drugs detailed the real-world impact of striking invalid pharmaceutical patents, showing that drug prices can plummet once junk patents are removed.

Heading Into 2026

The USPTO now faces thousands of substantive comments. Whether the agency backs off or tries to push ahead, EFF will stay engaged. Congress may also revisit PERA, PREVAIL, or similar proposals next year. Some patent owners will continue to push for rules that shield low-quality patents from any meaningful review.

But 2025 proved something important: When people understand how patent abuse affects developers, small businesses, patients, and creators, they show up—and when they do, their actions can shape what happens next. 

This article is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2025.

Fewer shoppers have headed to UK high streets in search of Boxing Day bargains, with central London suffering a significant decline in visitors as many decided to shun the traditional start of the sales.

Footfall at the country’s high streets and shopping centres fell on Friday morning, running slightly behind last year, according to figures from the monitoring company MRI Software. Across all UK retail destinations footfall slipped by 0.3%.

Following on from a decline in Boxing Day activity in 2024, there were 2.4% fewer visitors on Britain’s high streets than on 26 December last year, while there was a 2.6% slide in the number of people going to shopping centres.

However, retail parks bucked the trend and experienced a 6.9% increase in the number of visitors on Boxing Day morning. Retail parks, which are mostly in out-of-town locations, accessible by car and often offering free parking, have become more popular with shoppers in recent years thanks to their convenience.

The rise in shoppers deciding to visit retail parks could be seen as an “encouraging start to Boxing Day”, said Jenni Matthews, the marketing and insights director at MRI.

“This suggests that shoppers may well be coming out earlier than expected to grab those bargains; brush off the festive cobwebs,” she added.

Colder temperatures may have put off some would-be shoppers from travelling far from home. Central London recorded a 7.7% fall in the number of visitors compared with a year earlier, a much larger decline than the 3.4% fall recorded in other cities.

By contrast, there was a near 4% increase in visitor numbers in outer London, and there was a 10% rise in footfall in coastal towns, as consumers hoped to combine a visit to the shops with a day out.

The traditional Boxing Day start to the post-Christmas sales has increasingly shifted online in recent years, giving consumers the opportunity to secure some deals from the comfort of the sofa as early as Christmas Day itself. Large fashion and homeware retailers including Marks & Spencer and Next are now offering discounts of up to 50% online, while reductions will only be available in stores from Saturday.

Despite this, groups of shoppers travelled to Manchester’s Trafford Centre indoor mall, where some outlets opened their doors as early as 7.30am.

Queues gathered outside the Selfridges department store before opening, which was offering reductions of up to 50%, as was the cosmetics retailer Lush.

In the run-up to the big day, retailers had been hoping for a late rush to buy presents, given that Christmas Day fell on a Thursday this year, anticipating that shoppers would hunt out last-minute items at the start of the week.

However, there were signs that some consumers held back on purchases. Mild weather during the autumn and the start of winter for much of the country resulted in fewer people adding jumpers, coats or boots to their baskets, according to Clive Black, the head of consumer research at Shore Capital.

Many large fashion retailers – including Next and John Lewis – launched their reductions before Christmas, while others including New Look and Sports Direct were advertising discounts of up to 70%.

Retailers have faced a tough year of trading in 2025, with many consumers reining in their spending at a time when energy and grocery bills remain high. Uncertainty in the run-up to Rachel Reeve’s budget in late November over possible tax rises hit consumer confidence at the start of the crucial pre-Christmas trading period.

However, the average shopper is expected to spend £17 more on the end-of-year sales compared with last year, according to figures from the lender Barclays, taking the average budget to £253, up from £236 in 2024. However, it predicts that fewer consumers will take part amid cost of living pressures.

Consumers around the UK were expected to spend £3.6bn in the Boxing Day sales, as more sales shoppers use AI and other tools to help them locate the best deals. That figure was £1bn lower than was estimated for Boxing Day 2024.

Apple is seeking to overturn a landmark £1.5bn court ruling on behalf of millions of UK customers, which found the company overcharged them for years in its App Store.

The iPhone maker has applied to the court of appeal to challenge a verdict that campaigners heralded as the start of a “tidal shift against big tech”.

It is one of a cluster of cases heading towards trial in 2026 as consumers realise the mounting cost of paying up to 30% commission – what campaigners call the “Apple tax” – on apps and in-app purchases, which more people rely on for activities from fitness to dating.

The appeal, if allowed, involves one of several class action suits against Apple and Google in which consumers, small businesses and entrepreneurs are demanding over £6bn in combined compensation. The class action cases use an opt-out system that means millions of people can be represented at once in claims of breaches of competition law.

“It’s definitely a tipping point,” said Dr Rachael Kent, an academic at King’s College London who won the £1.5bn case against Apple on behalf of 36 million UK consumers. “People are pushing back against the harms from digital worlds, which they have to be living in and through every day and the financial implications of that,” she said.

Kent added that the win in October still felt “a bit pinch me”. If Apple’s appeal fails, every person in the UK who made App Store purchases between 2015 and 2024 could be entitled to a payout.

In the suite of class action cases, Apple and Google are accused of overcharging British consumers and developers in their app stores and, in the case of Apple, of “trapping” and overcharging customers with its iCloud data storage service.

Instead of up to 30%, Apple should be charging commission of 17.5% when selling apps and 10% on in-app purchases, while app developers should pay 10%, the competition appeal tribunal found in Kent’s case.

Another of the cases is being brought by Barry Rodger, a law professor at the University of Strathclyde, on behalf of more than 2,000 app developers who he argues are collectively entitled to up to £1bn in compensation.

“Small and medium-sized app developer businesses have suffered as the result of excessive profiteering by the App Store and Google Play,” he said. His case alleges Google Play has charged “excessive, arbitrary and discriminatory commissions” against developers, with the makers of dating and games apps particularly affected.

His suit is expected to reach trial at the competitions appeal tribunal in October 2026, and will be jointly managed with a claim for about £1bn on behalf of 19 million Google Play customers, who are alleged to have been overcharged. That case is being brought by the consumer activist Liz Coll and accuses Google of “excluding competition and/or charging an unlawfully high level of commission on digital purchases”, breaching competition law.

Coll said: “These types of large collective proceedings are new in the UK, but I’m really excited about the potential of the Kent decision to not only make people aware they were paying too much for apps through opaque commission but also that there is now a clear route to getting that put right. Where we need consumers to get really active now is in claiming back the money they’re owed.”

A Google spokesperson said: “Android provides more choice than any other platform and our fees are the lowest of any major app platform. We’ll defend these cases vigorously.”

Google argues that the class action cases seek to upend a system that has lowered prices and increased choice and that, if successful, would make downloading and using apps on Android phones more complicated and less safe.

And in the largest of all the claims, November saw the consumer campaign group Which? announce a £3bn claim against Apple over its iCloud services, claiming it is “trapping” customers with Apple devices into using it.

Apple called the Which? claims unfounded and said no customers are required to use iCloud. The company said it strongly disagrees with the ruling in Kent’s case over the App Store, and the tribunal took a flawed view of the “thriving and competitive app economy”, with other platforms providing “vigorous competition”. It said most apps are subject to a 15% commission, and the App Store helps drive the UK’s digital economy, facilitating billings and sales of over $55bn (£41bn) in the UK in 2024.

Kent said that people are “waking up to the harms of digital life and how it can be detrimental mentally, physically and financially”.

“There is a tidal shift that is happening against big tech,” she said. “Consumers are looking at all of the tools that they have to use every day. Covid really accelerated our reliance on technology and many of us went from using five apps in a week to perhaps 10 apps in a day to manage food shopping, food delivery, retail, fitness and diet tracking, keeping in close communication with friends and family, much more social media, increased screen time.

“A big part of the last six years working the case has been about educating people that this is actually happening. That’s what tech giants and marketeers like Apple are so brilliant at. It’s creating an ecosystem where we are foreclosed into decision making and we don’t even realise that this is actually how it’s happening.”

PIEDMONT, Calif. – The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened a defect investigation into Tesla’s Model 3 vehicles over the car door’s release and concerns the controls may not be easy to find in an emergency – the same concerns of Piedmont families whose college-age children died in a Cybertruck with the same type of door release.

Tesla Model 3 door handles

NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation opened the investigation on Dec. 23 after getting a complaint from a man in Georgia that called the mechanical door release “hidden, unlabeled, and not intuitive to locate during an emergency,” according to the filing. The filing references one incident involving a crash or fire, with one injury.

The agency said the probe covers nearly 180,000 model year 2022 Tesla Model 3 vehicles, where the chief complaint is that the “emergency egress controls are not readily accessible and clearly identifiable.”

Tesla Model Y door handles

This investigation follows another NHTSA inquiry stemming from nine examples of Tesla’s 2021 Model Y cars, where the agency reported parents not being able to get their children out of the back of the car, and they ended up breaking a window to get back in.

Based on NHTSA’s preliminary review, this condition appears to occur when the electronic door locks receive insufficient voltage from the vehicle.

Tesla response

Tesla did not immediately respond Friday to the latest NHTSA investigation.

But in September, Tesla design chief Franz von Holzhausen told Bloomberg’s Hot Pursuit! podcast that the company was looking to combine the manual and electronic release mechanisms in the doors, which are now separate, in order to make escaping the car easier and quicker in a “panic situation.”

“The idea of combining the electronic one and the manual one together into one button, I think, makes a lot of sense,” he said on the podcast. “That’s something that we’re working on.”

A closer look at Tesla Cybertruck’s design following death of 3 Piedmont students

Nearly a month after three college students died in a fiery Tesla Cybertruck crash in Piedmont, many questions still remain. We took a closer look at the car’s design and talked to experts about the car’s unique features.

Piedmont deaths in Cybertruck

The door handles are the subject of lawsuits filed by the parents of two college students who died in a fiery crash while they were passengers in a Tesla Cybertruck in Piedmont last year, just before Thanksgiving. The lawsuits allege the tricky design of the Cybertruck’s doors left the college students to die inside.

The families of Krysta Tsukahara, 19, and Jack Nelson, 20, have each filed separate lawsuits against Tesla.

Shortly after that fatal crash, KTVU took a closer look at the Cybertruck design, especially the issues with its electric doors and hard-to-break windows, exposing some of the same issues that the federal government is now investigating.

In a Cybertruck, the manual release for the door locks is a latch on the door in the front of the car by the window switches, and under a plastic well in the back “map pocket” of the car.

“It was clear to us that the door failed to operate because it lost power,” Roger Dreyer, the attorney for Krista’s parents, Noelle and Carl Tsukahara, said in a previous interview in October.

Nelson also survived the initial impact of the crash, his parents’ attorney, Matthew Davis, said at the time.

“His injuries were relatively minor,” Davis said. “What killed him was that he couldn’t get out of the car.”

A Bloomberg investigation this month found that 15 people have died over the last decade after being unable to open Tesla vehicle doors following a crash.

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