About

Patent Court is an open, free reference to United States patent litigation. It is built for the people who actually try and decide patent cases — litigators, in-house counsel, judicial clerks, and serious students — and for anyone curious about how the system works in practice. Every page is written from primary sources and links to the statutes, rules, and decisions it relies on.

What this is

Patent Court is a static, single-purpose reference. It covers the substantive doctrine that decides who wins a patent case — claim construction, infringement, validity, defenses, and damages — together with the procedural mechanics, the principal landmark decisions, the courts where most patent cases live, and a glossary of terms.

Each entry is structured so a working practitioner can read the lede, get the answer, and move on. The deeper sections follow for those who need to understand how a doctrine is litigated, where it is unsettled, and what is currently being argued in the Federal Circuit.

What this is not

Patent Court is not a court. Despite the name, this is an independent reference website. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated on behalf of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, any federal district court, the U.S. International Trade Commission, the USPTO or its Patent Trial and Appeal Board, or the Unified Patent Court in Europe. It cannot accept filings, docket cases, or decide disputes. For official information, go to the court or agency's own website; for a list of where U.S. patent cases are actually heard, see which court hears patent cases.

This is not legal advice. Reading the site does not create an attorney-client relationship. The summaries here are accurate as written but no summary substitutes for reading the cited statute or decision before acting on it.

This site is also not a news service, a docket tracker, a litigator directory, or a marketing platform. There is no advertising, no affiliate program, and no paywall.

How it is maintained

Pages are written from primary sources — the United States Code, the Code of Federal Regulations, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and decisions of the Supreme Court, Federal Circuit, and federal district courts. Bluebook citations are used throughout. The set is reviewed quarterly; material doctrinal changes are flagged on the changelog.

Where a doctrine is genuinely unsettled — for example, the post-Alice § 101 caselaw or recent Director-review practice at the PTAB — the page says so plainly rather than picking a side. Where a doctrine has changed in the last several years, the change is dated.

How to use it

Start from the section that matches the question. Doctrine covers the substantive rules. Procedure covers the mechanics. Cases covers the load-bearing precedents. Courts covers the districts where most filings occur. PTAB covers AIA trials. The glossary defines terms used across the site, and the Title 35 reference maps the statute section by section.

Internal links are heavy by design. Doctrine is interconnected, and a page on, for example, the doctrine of equivalents only makes sense alongside prosecution history estoppel and claim construction.

Privacy

The site uses Google Analytics 4 (Google tag, measurement ID G-152RYYTMEJ) to count page views and see which pages readers find useful. When a page loads, the Google tag sets first-party cookies and sends Google standard request data such as the page URL, referring page, browser and device type, and approximate location derived from the IP address. Patent Court uses this data only in aggregate, does not use it for advertising, and does not sell it. Patent Court has no accounts, forms, or comments, and collects nothing else.

Readers who prefer not to be measured can block the Google tag with a content blocker or install Google's Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. Email sent to the contact address is used only to respond and to correct the site.

Contributing

If a citation is wrong, a doctrine has shifted, or a sentence is unclear, write to the address on the contact page. Corrections are welcome and credited where appropriate.