In December 2025, USPTO Director Squires invited applicants to file special Rule 132 declarations aimed at patent eligibility, called Subject Matter Eligibility Declarations (SMEDs). According to a Patently-O empirical study by Dennis Crouch, the practice has grown slowly: a docket search found 460 such declarations filed in 414 applications.
Crouch identified the declarations by downloading roughly 6,100 Rule 130, 131, and 132 affidavits from published applications since December 4, 2025, and parsing them with OCR. The search was complicated because most eligibility declarations were filed as plain Rule 132 declarations, and about 15% never used words like "eligibility" or "101." Nearly all were filed in response to a §101 rejection; only a handful were proactive.
The outcomes give little encouragement to applicants. Where the next office action was on record, about 25% of applications received a notice of allowance and another 9% saw the §101 rejection dropped, but about 66% received the same rejection again. Nearly all applicants amended their claims alongside the declaration, yet amendments did not separate winners from losers. When the rejection did disappear, examiners credited the declaration about half the time.