How to Do a Patent Law Suit Search
Searching for information on a patent lawsuit can be readily performed by knowing some basic case information and having Internet access. Because patent lawsuits are the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal courts, you can search for lawsuit information using the publicly accessible electronic records maintained by the federal courts. You will need to know some minimal case information, such as the name of one of the parties, in order to search these records. But even if you don't know in which of the nearly 100 federal courts the lawsuit is pending, you can access records from all these courts using just a few websites.
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Things You'll Need
- Computer
- Internet access
- Case information (e.g. plaintiff or defendant's name, case number)
Instructions
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1
Gather all the identifying information you can about the lawsuit you want to search, such as the names of the parties involved in the lawsuit, the case number and the court where it is pending. If you know the court where the lawsuit is pending, you can limit your search to the records of that court. If you are uncertain about where the lawsuit is pending, you will have to search three databases of federal court records until you locate it.
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2
Locate the case and docket information website for the U.S. District Courts, called Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER). There are a total of 91 district courts spread across the country with at least one district court in every state. In nearly all situations in which one private party is suing another private party on a patent claim, the lawsuit will be filed in one of these district courts. You can search for the lawsuit with PACER by using one of the party's names or even the case number, if you have it. You can also limit your search to one district, if you know where the lawsuit was filed.
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3
Locate the opinion and decision information website for the Court of Federal Claims. This court has jurisdiction over a variety of lawsuits that can be filed against the federal government, including patent infringement lawsuits. If you know that the patent lawsuit involves the federal government as a defendant, you should search the records available on this site for information about the lawsuit.
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Locate the case and docket information website for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which is also called PACER but is a separate database than the PACER site referred to in Step 2. This is the only federal court whose jurisdiction is not geographical; instead, it is based on the subject matter of the lawsuits, which includes patent lawsuits. This court hears appeals from judgments made in patent lawsuits in all district courts and the Court of Federal Claims. If the patent lawsuit you want to search is on appeal, you can find information about it from this website.
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Tips & Warnings
Most documents filed in patent lawsuits can be downloaded from the federal court websites. If the document you want is not available for downloading, you can obtain a copy of the document directly from the clerk's office for the court where the case was filed.
References
Resources
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