Appeal outcomes in the software technology center run sixteen points better than in the business method technology center

2026-09-21Costs

United States Patent and Trademark Office, Monthly Appeal Statistics, August 2026, ex parte appeal receipts and dispositions, fiscal year to date, October 2025 through August 2026

Across the whole Patent Trial and Appeal Board, 4,554 ex parte appeals were decided in the fiscal year through August 2026: 2,711 affirmed, or 59.5 percent, 357 affirmed in part, or 7.8 percent, and 1,454 reversed, or 31.9 percent. The technology centers diverge sharply. Technology Center 2100, which examines computer architecture, software and artificial intelligence subject matter, decided 497 appeals and reversed 196 of them, a reversal rate of 39.4 percent. Technology Center 3600, which holds the business method art units, decided 943 appeals and reversed 216, a reversal rate of 22.9 percent, while Technology Center 2600 decided 287 and reversed 103, at 35.9 percent. The Office does not break these outcomes down by type of rejection, so no official figure exists for reversal rates on subject matter eligibility rejections specifically.

What it changesWhere an application is classified changes the expected value of an appeal by roughly sixteen percentage points, and that belongs in the decision about whether to appeal or file a continuation. An application in Technology Center 2100 carrying a rejection the examiner will not withdraw is worth appealing on these numbers; the same rejection in a business method art unit in Technology Center 3600 is a harder bet and usually argues for a claim amendment and a continuation instead. Anyone quoting a reversal rate for eligibility rejections in particular is quoting a private analysis of Office data rather than an Office statistic, and that distinction is worth making when the number is being used to justify a budget.

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