Remarks by Director Squires — INTA 2026 Annual Meeting

Keynote remarks as delivered

John A. Squires, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO

INTA 2026 Annual Meeting

May 4, 2026

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us.

It is amazing to be here with you in London - for us, "just across the pond" as they say!

And thank you to Jenny for that generous introduction.

Thank you also to INTA CEO Etienne Sanz de Acedo and the staff of the association for your hard work in organizing this year's Annual Meeting. You know, Etienne posted on social media the preparatory meeting - not committee meeting, mind you - but the working room photo, behind-the-scenes, to make this magic happen - and I commented that, right there is Exhibit A of a well-oiled machine. I thank each and every one of you - let's give the team a hand!

Just last week, British Royalty - none other than His Majesty King Charles III and Her Majesty Queen Camilla - crossed the pond too, and visited our purple mountain's majesty and fruited plains, where you could feel the warmth as both hosts and guests enjoyed our hospitality, our people, and the beauty of the Shenandoah Valley.

We share of course a long and storied friendship between our two countries.

As President Trump remarked, "History has known no more powerful force than the combination of American patriotism and British pride."

It's truly remarkable - and stands testament to the types of lasting bonds, unshakable bonds that freedom and opportunity beget and that only freedom and opportunity can build.

Also, on our side of the pond, this year is our semiquincentennial - which we all know is Latin for - "that's a bloody good start."

Seriously, though, there's so much to celebrate not only for our birthday but also with you and the entire world.

You see, the notion of independence began with an idea by our Founders that every person was endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

That spark, of course, fueled the fires of freedom and lighted the world with our new-found independence, and America as the birthplace of modern democracy.

Then, something even more remarkable happened. Subtly but profoundly, as a young nation created its governance structure and guiding document - the likes of which had never been seen before - our Founders went further, and enshrined IP protection into the very heart of the American Constitution in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 - which secures for a limited time "to Authors and Inventors the EXCLUSIVE RIGHT to their respective writings and discoveries."

And there it is.

The word "right."

It's the only recitation of a "right" (and "right" next to the word "exclusive" mind you - but that's a topic and debate for another time) - the sole enumeration of a "right" in the textual document itself. Otherwise, you have to look to the first 10 amendments - our Bill of Rights.

As a result, remarkably, the USPTO is one of our oldest federal missions. Before there was a Department of Treasury.

Before there was a Department of State.

Before there were most of the institutions we now take for granted in the U.S. government - there was an affirmative commitment to innovation.

In 1790, President George Washington signed the first U.S. patent, Patent No. 1.

Patents as you may know are numbered sequentially, and on June 19, 2018, in his first term, President Donald J. Trump, signed U.S. Patent No. 10 Million.

From the birth of the Republic, innovation has been central - it is part of the American experiment itself, and is the bedrock of our unshakeable belief in American Exceptionalism.

For more than two centuries, that experiment continues, and continues to bear amazing fruit.

In invention - it's steam engines and steel, electricity and aviation, and now semiconductors and software, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence.

And in marks of trade, it's badges of origin from soda water to blue jeans, golden arches, arms and hammers, hogs, a girl walking in the rain with an umbrella, a "swoosh," a solitary fruit with a bite taken out, to now when you hear, "Hey, it's Taylor," you know it's "Alright, Alright, Alright."

So, here we stand in London at INTA, staring mouth agape at the rarefied, luminous spaghetti that 'is and of' the connective tissue of source and product and recognition.

For our part, we recognize that we are indeed part and parcel and the very fabric of this explosively energetic world of creativity's endless spark - and IP protection - that's the key - protection…that IP protection built.

We stand in awe, for we are stewards and caretakers of these choices, these descriptors, these flights of fancy defined - and our job is to bring this dynamism and endless spirit into the future.

So, let's do that for a second, Go Back to the Future! à la Doc Brown, because our DeLorean will show us that tomorrow's innovation ecosystem does not exist one-dimensionally, but it lives and breathes in individuals and their muses - to whom our Constitution confers rights directly and takes flight in the places where ideas are first imagined.

• Where the flash of genius leaves its indelible mark, and
• Where the sweat of the brow reaches 99% perspiration in research labs, in the proverbial dorm rooms and in garages fueled by 4 o'clock in the morning-type of courage.
• Where someone's burst of creativity somehow, someway equates a delicious fruit, that eaten once a day keeps-the-doctor-away, to personal computing.

Great Scott, indeed.

That's why it's such an honor to steward America's Innovation Agency for Secretary Lutnick and President Trump - a branding force in his own right with no peer - to stand and deliver IP rights protection to our stakeholders, to our applicants and to those who see the world just a little bit differently through their own lens, bringing us along to the brilliant tomorrows they've envisioned, tinker by tinker, breakthrough by breakthrough, and dream by dream.

Our mission, in America's 250th year, remains of course the same as when the word "right" was at the tip of a quill pen and inserted to our Constitution and to every Americans' DNA.

These rights and protections we provide enable entrepreneurs to compete and investors to believe.

Every piece of IP we put into circulation is a potential job, a new business, a competitive advantage, an investible asset. And is yet another win for both society and the Constitutional foresight of our Founders and the very freedoms they envisioned in 1776.

So today, the question becomes, how to position the agency to deliver value for our stakeholders, while preserving core access, infrastructure and our mission to meet an elusive and emerging market?

And how do we - as honest brokers - help applicants and stakeholders meet the new and the next.

For our nation, we're clear-eyed about our beginnings, for if America is the birthplace of modern democracy, looking out at our modern world, then the World Wide Web is the greatest engine of democratization the world has ever seen. And on top of that infrastructure is layered democracy's new favorite son - and daughter - personal branding.

For with the internet, social media, webcasting, and recording, Andy Warhol's itself famous fifteen minutes of fame - fifteen minutes of internet time to be clear - is more than enough - and, boy, it can also be a lifetime and beyond.

For patents, eligibility is the frontier issue - the line between abstract idea and applied invention - the doorway to the America's Invention Agency.

For trademarks, I submit to you the same truth: Eligibility is also the frontier issue - here, the line between generally unprotectible name, image, and likeness, winding a course through a differing cross-section of rights across our fifty United States and - if used in commerce, federal protection under the Lanham Act, much more powerful, much more ownable, and much more valuable.

That is the frontier - personal brands - for they are the real-world residual of the internet's irresistible force of democratization.

So, as America's Branding Agency, what do we do with that?

What do we do as we stand athwart history-in-the making, real-time, and yell "protectable" (or not protectable)?

How do personal branders even know that their commercial use can be owned?

Who we are?

What do we do?

And where to even find us?

In the age where the internet is everywhere, we need to be everywhere too. And to do that, we need to be branded, just like you would advise your clients.

We realized we need a brand, we realized that America's Branding Agency needed to be branded - and that brand is "America's Branding Agency."

So, I'll admit, taking that in, our heads started to spin a little, kind-of-like that famous Norman Rockwell rendering of the artist in the mirror, drawing the artist, drawing the artist, drawing the artist…

But we also realized our market was actually hiding in plain sight, democratization was pointing the way, and America's Branding Agency - needed to, to summarize the words of the Great One - now there's a trademark! - Wayne Gretzky - to skate to where the puck is going, not where it's been.

And that puck is not NHL (Registered Trademark, thank you very much), but the ephemeral, shape shifting world of NIL and Personal Brands.

So, as to where that puck is going, and how do we position a roughly 4000 employee business unit to get there for our users, applicants, and stakeholders?

About a year ago, we started noticing something unusual - a subtle, but unmistakable shift - in the nature of branding itself.

Not just more trademark filings.

Different trademark filings.

Applications increasingly connected to identity itself.

Voice.

Persona.

Motion.

Authenticity.

Then we started seeing things like Matthew McConaughey filing for sound marks and motion marks.

Taylor Swift continuing to build one of the most sophisticated identity-protection strategies in modern entertainment.

Athletes filing trademark applications before they even turn professional.

And candidly, the lawyers involved in these filings deserve real credit.

Because sophisticated trademark practitioners -INTA members - you saw very early where these risks were heading.

You understood that in a world increasingly shaped by AI-generated content and synthetic media, authenticated identity itself was becoming more valuable.

And from where we sit at the USPTO, those filings provided a fascinating early window into where the market was moving - where we had to skate to.

One of the interesting things about the USPTO is that we get a real-time line of sight into the economy.

Applications tell stories.

And at some point, the story became impossible to miss.

Personal branding had become democratized.

Historically, large-scale personal branding was mostly limited to celebrities.

Today, millions of people increasingly operate as brands.

Athletes.

Creators.

Influencers.

Entrepreneurs.

People building audiences online.

People monetizing identity itself.

And AI was accelerating all of it.

At the same time, AI risk was accelerating in tandem.

Deepfakes.

Voice cloning.

Synthetic endorsements.

Counterfeit personas.

Unauthorized use of identity.

And increasingly, when someone's profile rises, their exposure rises with it.

That is true whether you are Matthew McConaughey, the Minister of Culture, or a red-shirt freshman hoping to make the Longhorns - (hook 'em!), or whether you are Taylor Swift or a beginning TikToker.

So, our user base was telling us - those who pay the $350 application fee - and I'm here to tell you that's a bargain - they were showing us in fact that this next generation of trademark users increasingly encounter trademarks - and the benefits of protection through sports, social media, entrepreneurship, content creation, podcasting, influencer culture, or NIL opportunities.

In other words, our users are changing.

The market is certainly changing.

And to remain useful, relevant, and on mission, we needed to evolve too.

What to do?

Well, for sure the USPTO could not keep communicating like it was 1999.

Now, I know, I know, government agencies are not generally known for branding themselves particularly well.

GASP - you don't know that?

And while "United States Patent and Trademark Office" is an EXTRAORDINARILY important name,

we're not exactly a household one.

I know, I know, - that's the hard truth.

As millions of new people start entering into the branding economy, for users to find us, we needed to brand ourselves, just like your clients do, just like you advise them to do.

Now, if only there was a name of some sort that conveyed that we are central to brands…

that you can't really have a protectable brand in any channel of trade without us.

If there were only some specific way or term of art by which to brand ourselves and convey, we're all about branding.

Oh wait!!

There is - America's Branding Agency - and it was, I'm proud to say, born strong.

• Catching on much more quickly and broadly than we anticipated: America's Branding Agency.

And what we liked about it of course is not that it sounded catchy.

(But it kinda does)

What we really liked was that it translates and conveys our mission.

And isn't that exactly what trademarks are supposed to do?

We help protect brands.

And increasingly, those brands are personal brands.

Now at roughly the same time, as a result of a couple of Supreme Court cases, NIL exploded.

And the more we looked at NIL, the more obvious it became that it sat right at the intersection of everything changing in modern commerce.

Sports.

Technology.

Identity.

Social media.

Creator economies.

Artificial intelligence.

And branding.

Lots and lots and lots of branding.

Which led to the next logical question -- if we successfully brand, where will our next generation of users likely first encounter us?

Now, I'm sorry to say not in a paneled law firm conference room.

They'll encounter the issues through sports.

Through content creation.

Through YouTube.

Through Instagram.

Through TikTok.

Through an endorsement deal.

Through a viral moment.

Through events.

And then as we started to look ahead in the year, we saw that, lo and behold, this year's World IP Day theme was IP and sports, and the NFL Draft was to be held right within it.

And the Draft suddenly became very interesting, because it isn't just a stepping-stone from collegiate athletics to pro sports, it's an actual marketplace.

The market for college athletes' NIL has grown rapidly into billions of dollars - out of nowhere.

Universities are now routinely signing athletes to contracts that slice and package their identity rights.

These rights involve their names, photos, and social media presence in connection with their brands.

And right before the NFL Draft, Quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who was the Heisman trophy winner on the undefeated 16-0 National Championship Indiana Hoosier Football team - and for those of you who have been in cryo-sleep for I don't know the last 50 years - you heard me right, the NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP INDIANA HOOSIER FOOTBALL TEAM - not basketball.

Mr. Mendoza - the No. 1 draft pick, filed a dozen trademarks for his name and other catchphrases to secure his personal brand.

So, going forward, how exactly do individuals ensure that their NIL rights remain meaningfully and demonstrably theirs?

And what control do they have over their rights - so that they do not inadvertently or otherwise sign away long-term control that erodes their freedom to use their own identity?

These are issues that college athletes - and younger - are suddenly dealing with in an unsettled landscape.

In peeling back the layer of this legal onion, the core IP right that's at stake is the right of publicity.

And guaranteeing this right is dependent on American state laws that vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

Now with AI and easily-created deep fakes, seeking IP protection becomes even more imperative.

And this extends beyond the world of sports figures, you also have social media influencers and entertainers, who see their brands explode in a manner of hours.

This is a fast phenomenon that established brands recognize and are tapping into by engaging with influencers to promote their products.

According to a survey by Matter Communications, 81% of consumers have either researched, purchased, or considered purchasing a product or service after friends, family, or influencers shared it online. 81%.

For social media influencers, establishing your brand is critical, not only for sponsorship opportunities, but also to prevent AI impersonation and others from taking your brand identity.

This is a real threat and reputational risk for influencers, in particular, for everyday Americans that become influencers through hobbies or other passions that quickly grow into a business.

Now, back to the Draft - which in American football, now roadshows to different cities each year - cities compete for the honor, and it sits at the uniquely American intersection of collegiate athletics and professional sports. A true marketplace as I said.

Draft Week is where many young athletes and families first confront the reality that their name, image, and likeness may suddenly possess significant commercial value and they can enhance that value if they start their personal journeys while in college or even high school.

And the same AI risks are out in force now - impersonation, unauthorized merchandise, fake endorsements, and increasingly, identity misuse.

Recognizing this, and the World IP Day fell right during the Draft, we made a decision on engagement and education - to establish an on-the-ground presence directly at the 2026 NFL Draft event in Pittsburgh.

And we developed a campaign - as branders do, you know, - we are America's Branding Agency, in case you hadn't heard - our campaign was "Register. Protect. Score authentic wins." And we broadcast our World IP Day educational hour live from Pittsburgh - right between the Heisman Trophy display and the Hall of Fame exhibit, "Authenticity: The Name of the Game."

It was the triple witching hour of branders' dreams and for America's Branding Agency, we provided practical trademark and NIL education to athletes, families, creators, and fans in real time, in Steel City, at the NFL Draft, on World IP Day.

If I had a mic - I would drop it.

Most importantly, we dutifully approached this effort not as a commercial participant, but as a trusted federal resource positioned right "on the 50-yard line" of brand protection for both the league and aspiring draftees.

Our role is to help educate, simplify, and raise awareness at precisely the moment when many individuals first begin navigating the realities of personal branding as real, economic activity.

The response was overwhelming. Thousands engaged with us at the event and via the broadcast. And the response we hear was exactly what we hoped: "I didn't know the USPTO did this."

That confirmed for us the best way to be a market responsive resource is to engage by building forward-looking to educational campaigns around where the market is actually heading around the issues that matter. And matter right now.

The business implications of this shift are also significant. Trademark filings by class increased variously by 5 to 7 percent year over year - we finished FY 2025 with more than 824,000 filings.

If personal branding continues expanding at its current pace, Trademarks could potentially soon see an additional 100,000 plus filings more annually - double digit growth tied to personal brands, creator ventures, NIL activity, and identity-based commerce.

At the current filing fee structure, that growth is many tens of millions of dollars in additional fee collections annually, which reinforces the importance of the USPTO's fee-funded operational model, and the fee-setting authority Congress provided the agency.

But importantly, our objective is mission fulfillment (public service and innovation promotion) - not revenue maximization - and we fulfill our mission through relevance, accessibility, and responsiveness to a changing economy.

No doubt the global economy is moving toward a future where identity itself increasingly carries commercial significance. As that trend accelerates, the role of trademarks, authenticated branding, and public education surrounding intellectual property will only become more important.

Being "America's Branding Agency" and being fee-funded, Congress has entrusted us with the flexibility to think dynamically and respond to emerging market realities.

That flexibility matters enormously.

It allows us to modernize.

To experiment.

To improve.

To meet new users where they are, a new model for engagement - event engagement, community engagement - plain ol' user engagement.

And being afforded the ability to run like a business, we are now exploring ideas like deferred-fee pilots for young NIL or first-time personal branding applicants awaiting their first endorsement deals.

Such are exactly the reasons why we seek your continued support as our fee setting authority is up for renewal this year (occurs every 6 years).

Through this first engagement event of its kind, we learned a lot, and a lot learned about us, as many young athletes and creators are just beginning their commercial journey.

If protecting brands early matters - and we believe it does - then our modern institutions should think seriously about reducing barriers for new entrants into the branding economy.

And candidly, this is representative of something much larger that is happening globally.

We are entering an era where identity itself increasingly carries economic value.

And in that environment, authenticity becomes incredibly important.

This is why trademarks matter.

This is why outreach matters.

This is why education matters.

Because where the puck is going is increasingly clear:

• Identity-based commerce.
• Creator economies.
• AI-driven risk issues - and rewards for those who federally protect.

With millions of new brand owners entering the marketplace, the next five years of trademarks is going to look very different than the last twenty-five.

And if one thing we know about change is that it's constant, my question for you is where else would you rather be?

Particularly here at INTA. Because you, as a trademark community, saw much of this early.

And we take our cues from you and the window that you and applicants and users provide into the market.

That's why our partnership matters.

And as you can see going forward, it is going to matter even more.

The USPTO is here to help for anyone wanting to protect their brand.

Athletes.

Creators.

Influencers.

Entrepreneurs.

Small businesses.

Our message is:

If your name, image, and likeness is valuable, individuals and companies may try to use it without your permission-including with AI deepfakes.

Misuse of your NIL can hurt the essence of your brand and who you are to your customers, fans, and followers.

If you use your NIL in connection with goods and services, the most powerful way to establish and protect your brand nationwide and globally is to register your trademarks.

And, as we celebrate America's 250th birthday, and again Back to the Future! in our well-traveled DeLorean, we think fondly of iconic American marquee brands that have brought joy to all of us: Coca-Cola, Levi's, Ford, Harley-Davidson, and of course, the NFL, to name a few.

But what will the next 250 years of trademarks look like?

America has always looked toward the future and risen to the occasion of emerging technology, and this is no different. The USPTO is here to meet the moment.

And meet it we shall. We're also harnessing the power of AI, as Dan will tell you about, with our new Agentic Class Act tool - taking international classification and pseudo-mark mundacity which used to take 5 months, now down to 5 seconds. We are attacking fraud and fraudsters similarly, where we've, since last year, removed approximately 50,000 fraudulent applications from our register and over 87,000 unused good and services in trademark registrations since 2022.

So, together, we must ensure that what is authentic remains authentic.

Score. Authentic. Wins.

We intend to keep listening carefully to markets, creators, athletes, businesses, practitioners, and you.

We intend to keep modernizing.

And we intend to continue building America's Branding Agency for you, so that we are useful, visible, accessible, and prepared for where commerce and identity are heading next, and what the democratization of IP brings.

Thank you for skating with me.

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