Data updated through 2020
The Patent Litigation Dataset has been updated as of March 2024 and now contains detailed patent litigation data on 96,966 unique district court cases filed during the period 1963-2020. OCE and partners at the University of San Diego Law School collected all of the data from the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) and RECAP, an independent project designed to serve as a repository for litigation data sourced from PACER. The final output datasets, provided in six different files, include 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, which cover more than 5 million separate documents contained in the case docket reports. There is also a sixth file with hand-coded information on patent-in-suit and case type for most cases filed between 2003 and 2020.
Technical documentation for the March 2024 release
Technical documentation is available for the 2024 release and can be cited as Toole, A., R. Miller, and T. Sichelman (2024). “Technical Documentation for Patent Litigation Reports Data, 1963-2020.” USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2024-01. Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4780166
We continue to point interested users to existing documentation describing the hand-coded patent and case type variables. It can be cited as Schwartz, D., T. Sichelman, and R. Miller (2019). “USPTO Patent Number and Case Code File Dataset Documentation.” USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2019-05. Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3507607.
Legacy documentation
In addition, a document describing the original data release is still available and can be cited as: Marco, A., A. Tesfayesus, A. Toole (2017). “Patent Litigation Data from US District Court Electronic Records (1963-2015).” USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2017-06. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2942295. There is also an addendum to this original document, which describes changes to the Dataset for the 2019 release which covered district court cases filed through 2016 and added the patent and case type information. Please note that the technical sections provided in these legacy documents have been superseded by the documentation for the current release.
For questions, please email EconomicsData@uspto.gov
Data files
Download full set of data files for 2020 [.csv format (467 MB)][.dta format (610 MB)]
Download full set of data files for 2016 [.csv format (350 MB)][.dta format (374 MB)]
Download full set of data files for 2015 [.dta format (280 MB)][.csv format (274 MB)]
Download individual data files:
| File Name | 2015 | 2016 | 2020 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| cases | DTA 3.13 MB | CSV 2.94 MB | DTA 4.42 MB | CSV 4.69 MB | DTA 7.63 MB | CSV 5.77 MB |
| names | DTA 7.18 MB | CSV 6.92 MB | DTA 8.74 MB | CSV 8.74 MB | DTA 42.1 MB | CSV 10.5 MB |
| attorneys | DTA 19.1 MB | CSV 28.4 MB | DTA 28.6 MB | CSV 37.3 MB | DTA 44.8 MB | CSV 44.3 MB |
| documents | DTA 247 MB | CSV 233 MB | DTA 326 MB | CSV 294 MB | DTA 506 MB | CSV 400 MB |
| pacer_cases | DTA 3.01 MB | CSV 2.34 MB | DTA 3.04 MB | CSV 2.63 MB | DTA 3.33 MB | CSV 3.03 MB |
| patents | No data | No data | DTA 3.92 MB | CSV 2.89 MB | DTA 6.55 MB | CSV 3.34 MB |
The direct download pages for 2015 data, for 2016 data, and for 2020 data are also available.
Note: The DTA (Stata dataset) files are saved in the Stata-13 data file format for 2015, and the Stata-14 data file format for 2016 and 2020.