Technical Documentation for Patent Litigation Docket Reports Data, 1963-2020

Abstract

In March of 2017, the Office of the Chief Economist (OCE) at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) first released patent litigation docket report data for public use. For cases included in Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) for the 1963-2015 period, the data files included information on the litigating parties involved and their attorneys; the cause of action; the court location; important dates in the litigation history; and descriptions of all documents submitted in a given case. In 2019, the data files were updated through calendar year 2016 and a file containing hand-coded patents-in-suit and case types was added. As of March 2024, the Patent Litigation Docket Report Data has been updated and now contains detailed patent litigation data on nearly 97,000 unique district court cases filed through 2020. Although the data elements made available are essentially the same as in the previous release, we include data on cases filed between 2017 and 2020. We also include updated information on cases that were still in progress as of the time of the data collection for the last expansion and update. The purpose of this brief document is to provide a description of this latest litigation data release so that analysts will have one source for technical information regarding the new release rather than having to rely upon three different sources – the original 2017 documentation and two addenda.

Keywords: patents, litigation, intellectual property

JEL Classification: O3, K4