Federal Circuit Affirms Dismissal of Nesarikar v. USPTO Pro Se Suit Over Micro-Entity Denial and Article III Standing

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed on May 12, 2026 the dismissal of a pro se lawsuit brought by three inventors who challenged the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s refusal to grant them reduced filing fees as a “micro entity.” The unanimous opinion, joined by Judges Taranto, Hughes, and Cunningham, held that the inventors’ own representations to the USPTO undermined any claim of ownership in the disputed application, leaving them without Article III standing.

Ashlesha, Anika, and Abhijit Nesarikar are named inventors on U.S. Patent Application No. 18/069,288, filed in late December 2022. When submitting the application, the Nesarikars certified that they qualified as a micro entity under 35 U.S.C. § 123, a status that — at the time — entitled qualifying applicants to an 80% reduction in certain filing fees. Micro-entity status is available only to applicants who have not been named as inventors on more than four previously filed patent applications. Applications subject to a prior employment-based assignment obligation, however, do not count against that threshold.

The USPTO notified the Nesarikars in April 2024 that their micro-entity certification appeared erroneous because they were named on at least five earlier applications. The Nesarikars invoked the employment-based exception, asserting that they had been obligated to assign rights in the earlier applications — and in the ‘288 application itself — as a result of prior employment. Across several months of follow-up requests, however, they produced no assignment agreement, no contractual language, and no other supporting evidence. The USPTO refused to accept their representations as sufficient proof of micro-entity eligibility, suspended examination pending payment of the correct fees, and issued a notice of abandonment in February 2025 after no payment was made.

The Nesarikars then sued the USPTO in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, asserting violations of the Administrative Procedure Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act and seeking injunctive relief that would require the USPTO to recognize their micro-entity status. The USPTO moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The district court agreed and dismissed without prejudice, finding that the Nesarikars had not carried their burden of showing they retained any rights to the ‘288 application.

The Federal Circuit affirmed. Because the exhibits attached to the complaint were considered part of the pleading, the panel reviewed those documents alongside the complaint itself and found that the Nesarikars’ repeated assertions of an obligation to assign were central to — and fatal to — their standing claim. The Nesarikars had offered “only conclusory statements about the nature of the supposed assignment obligation,” without identifying the assignment’s terms, the assignee, or when the agreement took effect or was executed.

The court acknowledged the general principle that named inventors are presumed to own their applications, but declined to give it effect here. The Supreme Court has recognized that absent an agreement to the contrary an employer does not have rights in an employee’s invention. That default presumption did not apply, the panel reasoned, where the Nesarikars themselves had affirmatively represented to the USPTO that a contrary agreement existed.

The Nesarikars also argued that ownership interests in other patent applications, or non-ownership interests such as reputational harm, could independently support standing. The CAFC rejected both. Ownership of other applications was not raised in the complaint itself, so the district court did not err in declining to consider it. The reputational-interest theory was first advanced after the magistrate judge’s report and recommendation and was therefore forfeited. The court observed that a concrete reputational interest with economic consequences can support standing in inventorship correction suits, but the Nesarikars alleged no such concrete interest here.

The CAFC also touched on, but did not resolve, threshold questions about whether a private right of action exists under the relevant provision and whether the USPTO’s deficiency notice fell within the statute’s scope. The standing failure made those questions unnecessary to decide. Without a cognizable interest in the ‘288 application, the panel held, the Nesarikars could not establish an injury sufficient for Article III standing, as the only consequence they faced was the application fee dispute itself.

The dismissal was without prejudice, leaving open the possibility of refiling if the Nesarikars can plead their ownership interest with sufficient specificity. The practical lesson for applicants asserting micro-entity status under the employment-based exception is concrete: at both the USPTO stage and in any subsequent litigation, the actual assignment agreement or specific contractual language is effectively required to carry the burden of proof. Given the relatively narrow fee differential between micro-entity and small-entity status, applicants should weigh the evidentiary risk carefully against the cost savings before electing micro-entity status.