In a patent infringement suit, the alleged infringer wins with a ruling of either patent invalidity or non-infringement. It is ambiguous which of these outcomes is preferred by the alleged infringer. Invalidity may increase current-period competition, but simultaneously removes constraints to...

In 1982, the US Congress established the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) as the sole appellate court for patent cases. Ostensibly, this court was created to eliminate inconsistencies in the application and interpretation of patent law across federal courts, and thereby mitigate...

With its powerful mandate to unify patent law, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), established in 1982, represents an intriguing recent example of an institutional innovation with potentially broad economic consequences. Given sole responsibility for handling patent appeals and...

This paper describes a data set built to analyze patent litigation in the United States during 1929-2006. The data include all patents in published district court and appellate court decisions in which validity and/or infringement are at issue. We collect numerous patent-specific variables and...

In Paragraph (iv) pharmaceutical cases, a patent-litigation decision often determines whether a brand-firm monopoly continues or generic entry occurs. Using unique patent litigation data and an event-study approach that accounts for probabilistic district court decisions and an appellate...