How to forecast cross-border patent infringement? - The case of U.S. international trade

The International Trade Commission is one venue for enforcement of United States Patents, the other venue being the Federal District Courts. The ITC conducts investigation on unfair methods of competition and unfair acts in the importation under United State Section 337. The majority of ITC investigations are based on the importation of goods that are alleged to infringe a United States patent. This paper seeks to investigate fundamental characteristics of patents investigated by ITC, name as “ITC patent” in this study, from 1976 to 2012 in order to obtain early precaution of possible ITC investigation for newly filed patents. Patents which have been investigated by ITC are defined as ITC patents (1305 patents) and those which have never been investigated by ITC defined as non-ITC patents (4,388,043 patents). Both ITC patents and non-ITC patents are analyzed to understand the differences between the two types of patents in terms of 11 variables. Subsequently, the difference between ITC patents and non-ITC patents in a manner that is statistically different from random distribution will be identified. Furthermore, regression model is used to test whether each of the above variables (the 16 indicators) is related to each other and evaluate the probability of being investigated by ITC.