Universities involvement in patent litigation: an analysis of the characteristics of US litigated patents

Some recent patent infringement litigations initiated by universities have resulted in multi-million dollar damages and have attracted public attention and stimulated research especially among law scholars. In this paper, we build a brand new database that include patents filed by universities at the United States and Trademark Office (USPTO), their characteristics and, eventually, the information about whether they have been used in infringements lawsuits by universities in the years 1990–2019. Our study is articulated in two parts. First, we show that, although it is still a quite rare phenomenon, patent litigation involving universities has been significantly growing in the last 2 decades. Second, we study the characteristics of university patents that have been litigated vis-à-vis non-litigated university patents. In this respect, we find that public universities and non-US universities are less inclined to litigate their patents compared to private and US universities. In addition, we also find that patent quality is an important determinant in the decision of university litigation. This result holds for patents in the Electrical Engineering sector, which is traditionally prone to opportunistic litigation, and no matter what type of university involved (public vs private, or US vs non-US).