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.
When using these data, users are requested to cite the document: 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.
An additional working paper describing the methods for identifying patents-in-suit and case type is also available and can be cited as: Schwartz, David L., Sichelman, Ted M. and Miller, Richard, USPTO Patent Number and Case Code File Dataset Documentation (December 1, 2019). USPTO Economic Working Paper No. 2019-05, Northwestern Law & Econ Research Paper No. 19-12, San Diego Legal Studies Paper No. 20-435. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3507607 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3507607
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 |
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.