How DEPLOY tracks patents and patent litigation

What we track

The patent graph holds four record types.

Patents. The USPTO record is the primary source. We track patent number, title, assignee at issue, assignment history, filing date, grant date, claim count, and family relationships when the relationships resolve at USPTO depth.

Patent litigations. The court docket is the primary source. We track filing date, court, plaintiff, defendant, asserted patents, status, and outcomes (judgment, settlement, dismissal) when adjudicated.

ITC investigations. The ITC docket is the primary source. We track investigation number (337-TA-####), respondents, complainants, asserted patents, institution date, and determinations.

Parties. Plaintiffs, defendants, ITC respondents, and ITC complainants are linked to Company or Person entities when they appear in the patent or litigation record. The party join connects the patent graph to the company graph at primary-source verification depth.

Verified versus claimed

A patent exists when the USPTO record exists. That is the verified anchor.

A patent's validity is contested when litigation lands. A patent's validity is settled only when a court rules, the patent office reexamines and rules, or the parties settle and the settlement is disclosed. None of these is the same as the existence of the patent. We do not treat a patent's existence as a claim about its validity.

A maker's assertion of infringement is a claim. The court's determination is verified. A settlement is verified at the fact of settlement. Settlement terms are typically sealed and surface as honest-absence unless an SEC filing or a court-ordered disclosure surfaces them.

We do not treat an assignment as verified unless the USPTO assignment record shows it. We do not treat a licensing arrangement as verified unless a party discloses it under a primary-source-anchored surface (typically an SEC filing or a court-ordered disclosure).

The ITC seam

ITC investigations are both regulatory actions and patent enforcement actions. A 337 investigation produces regulatory outcomes (exclusion orders, cease-and-desist orders) and patent-litigation outcomes (validity determinations, infringement determinations) on the same docket.

We model this seam structurally. Each patent_litigation record carries an optional related_regulatory_filing_id field pointing to the ITC investigation when one exists. A reader navigating from the company graph encounters the regulatory action; a reader navigating from the patent graph encounters the same investigation as a patent enforcement record. Both views resolve at the same primary-source docket.

The worked example is 337-TA-1398. The ITC instituted the investigation in 2025. Oura is the complainant. Ultrahuman, RingConn, and Amazfit are respondents. The patents asserted are biometric ring patents Oura holds. The patent_litigation record points at the ITC investigation via related_regulatory_filing_id. A reader on Oura's company page sees the litigation under patent enforcement. A reader on the 337-TA-1398 page sees the same record under regulatory action. Both views cite the ITC docket as primary source.

Source discipline

USPTO records anchor patent existence, assignment history, and reexamination outcomes.

Federal court dockets (PACER and equivalent) anchor litigation existence, filing dates, party identities, asserted patents, and status. Filings and orders within the docket anchor specific claims and rulings.

ITC dockets (EDIS) anchor 337 investigation institution, respondent identities, asserted patents, determinations, and subsequent Commission orders.

SEC filings (10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, S-1) anchor litigation disclosures, settlement amounts when disclosed, and material patent positions when disclosed by the assignee.

Tier-1 news is acceptable when it confirms a primary source. A New York Times article reporting an ITC determination is acceptable because the ITC docket exists separately. A trade-press article asserting an unspecified settlement amount without a primary source is treated as a claim.

We do not treat a maker's press release announcing a litigation as verification of the merits. The press release is a claim about how the maker frames the litigation. The docket is the verified record of the litigation itself.

Cap-flag application

Open litigation is cap-flagged at adjudication-pending. The plaintiff's allegations are preserved as preserved claims. The defendant's denials are preserved as preserved claims. We do not treat either side as verified until the court rules.

Settlement terms are cap-flagged when sealed. The fact of settlement is verified if the docket reflects it. The amount, the licensing terms, the cross-license scope, and the patent assignment outcomes stay at honest-absence unless an SEC filing or a court-ordered disclosure surfaces them.

Assignment history is cap-flagged when the USPTO assignment record is incomplete. We surface what the USPTO record shows and cap-flag the gaps. We do not infer an assignment chain from a maker's recitation.

Patent family relationships are cap-flagged when only one branch of the family resolves at USPTO depth. Continuation patents, divisionals, and reissues are tracked individually. Family-wide assertions stay cap-flagged unless every branch resolves at USPTO record.

The framework applies to us

If we ship a patent record under the wrong assignee, we correct it. If we anchor a litigation to the wrong docket, we correct it. If a settlement surfaces in an SEC filing that we missed at the time of original ingestion, we add the surfaced fact and log the addition.

The correction is logged at /corrections. The original source is preserved.

Patent records carry source attribution per claim. A reader can see which facts come from the USPTO record, which from the docket, which from the SEC filing, which from tier-1 news. The same source-discipline standard we apply to subjects applies to our own records.

Where to go next

The methodology canon: /methodology/what-verified-means for the core verified-vs-claimed framework, /methodology/verification-framework for the four anchors, /methodology/how-we-track-safety-incidents for the parallel framework on safety records.

The applied work: registry.deploy.report/patents for the patent records, registry.deploy.report/patent-litigations for the litigation records, registry.deploy.report/regulatory-filings for the ITC and FDA dockets.

For the canonical worked example: 337-TA-1398 on the registry surfaces the Oura-Ultrahuman ITC investigation at primary-source verification with the related_regulatory_filing_id seam linking the patent_litigation record to the regulatory_filing record.