Incident Tracker / United States (federal)
In re Brian E. Mitchell, USPTO Proceeding No. D2026-16
·US Patent and Trademark Office, Office of Enrollment and Discipline·US-FEDOther
The US Patent and Trademark Office's Office of Enrollment and Discipline publicly reprimanded California patent attorney Brian Mitchell, whose AI-drafted claim-construction chart in a federal patent case cited nonexistent portions of the patent's intrinsic record. Reported as the USPTO's first disciplinary order predicated on generative-AI misuse, it treats hallucinated citations to a specification and file history as an ethics violation.
- Court
- US Patent and Trademark Office, Office of Enrollment and Discipline
- Date
- 2026-07-27
- Who used the AI
- Lawyer
- AI tool
- Not identified in the record
- Conduct
- A registered patent attorney (Reg. No. 50,612, California) used two generative AI tools, one to draft and one to review, to prepare a joint claim-construction chart in Magpul Industries Corp. v. Mission First Tactical Group (E.D. Pa.) whose citations to the patent's specification, figures and prosecution history referred to nonexistent or misattributed passages.
- Outcome
- Other
- Penalty
- No monetary penalty recorded
- Regulatory outcome
- USPTO Office of Enrollment and Discipline: Public reprimand by settlement for violations of 37 CFR 11.101, 11.103, 11.804(c) and 11.804(d); settlement executed 20 July 2026, approved 21 July 2026, final order dated 27 July 2026, published on the OED reading room 27 August 2026. (2026-07-27)
- Status
- Verified against listed sources
- Last checked
- 2026-09-03
Primary sources for this incident
Related regulation records for this incident
No related regulation record has been linked to this incident yet.
Cite this record
SafeLegalAI Global Legal AI Incident Tracker, “In re Brian E. Mitchell, USPTO Proceeding No. D2026-16”, safelegalai.com/tracker/in-re-brian-mitchell-uspto (accessed 2026-09-04). Data: CC BY 4.0.