U.S. Patent Litigation Docket Reports from 1963 to 2016

74,623 unique U.S. District Court patent litigation cases filed between 1963 and 2016. The data includes details on litigating parties, attorneys, cause of action, court location, litigation dates, and over 5 million document-level entries from docket reports.

Use Cases

• Analyze litigation trends by cause of action and court location over the 53-year time range.
• Map networks of attorneys and litigating parties involved in patent disputes across the 74,623 cases.
• Study the volume and types of documents submitted in a case using the over 5 million document-level entries.

Strengths

• Covers 74,623 unique court cases, providing a substantial sample for longitudinal analysis.
• Includes over 5 million document-level entries from docket reports, offering granular detail.
• Sourced from authoritative PACER and RECAP systems, ensuring data originates from official court records.

Limitations

• Data ends in 2016, making it stale for analyzing recent litigation trends or legal developments.
• The dataset is split across five different files, requiring joins or merges for a complete view of a case.
• Lacks explicit column definitions, which may complicate initial data exploration and analysis.

Provenance

Source

Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) and RECAP.

Collection Method

Collected from PACER and RECAP systems for court case and docket report content.

Time Range

1963 to 2016

Freshness

Last updated metadata indicates 2025-09-30, but the underlying data coverage ends in 2016.

Geography

United States (U.S. District Courts)