John Squires, a former adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, was named the next director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Squires will serve as the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and advise 1968 Wharton graduate and President Donald Trump and the Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on intellectual property policy. In the Sept. 22 announcement, Squires wrote that the opportunity to lead a large and influential office was “both humbling and the honor of a lifetime.”

“I look forward to working with my colleagues to deliver on the promise of American ingenuity and entrepreneurship — the very essence of our American spirit — and to equip, modernize, and align our agency to be the vanguard of our creative triumphs and fuel economic growth, technological progress, and global competitiveness,” Squires added.

Squires served as an adjunct professor for Penn Carey Law's L.L.M. program, where he helped lawyers trained outside the country learn about law in the United States.

The director of the USPTO is appointed by the president with the consent of the Senate. Squires was confirmed with the votes of 51 Senate Republicans. He will replace Coke Morgan Stewart, who has served as acting director of the agency since Jan. 20. Stewart will return to her position as deputy director.

Squires received a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from Bucknell University and received his J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. 

Squires previously served as the chief intellectual property counsel at Honeywell and The Goldman Sachs Group, and has held intellectual property roles at Perkins Coie and Chadbourne and Parker. Prior to his secretarial appointment, Squires was the chair of Emerging Companies and Intellectual Property at Dilworth Paxson. 

He served as a  board member at FinClusive, a digital asset platform to ensure client compliance with financial regulations.