---
title: "Patent Health"
description: "Review potential patent issues across prosecution, maintenance, validity, ownership, and litigation-related considerations."
---

Patent Health helps you quickly identify potential issues that may affect a patent's enforceability, value, or litigation strategy. You can analyze a patent directly or review the patents associated with a selected case or party.

:::caution[Early Access]
Patent Health is currently available as an Early Access feature.
:::

## What it tells you

Patent Health reviews selected patents for a broad range of potential issues and organizes the results by severity.

The assessment can surface concerns related to areas such as:

- prosecution history
- maintenance and patent term
- related applications
- ownership and recorded assignments
- validity-related events
- post-grant activity
- litigation history
- other informational or administrative considerations

Results are summarized using three severity levels:

- **Minor**
- **Major**
- **Catastrophic**

The page also shows how many patents were analyzed and the number of issues identified at each severity level.

## Questions it can answer

- Does this patent have any issues that warrant closer review?
- Which patents in a case have the most significant potential concerns?
- Are there prosecution or maintenance issues associated with a patent?
- Does a patent have litigation or post-grant history that should be considered?
- Which patents associated with a party should I review more closely?

## How to interpret the analysis

Patent Health identifies **potential issues associated with the patents you select and assigns a severity level to each finding**.

Severity is intended to help prioritize review. A Major or Catastrophic finding may deserve attention before a Minor issue, but the severity label should not be treated as a legal conclusion about validity, enforceability, or value.

A patent can have multiple findings across different categories. The overall state shown for a patent reflects the issues identified in the assessment, while the expanded details explain each individual finding.

## Select patents to analyze

You can start a Patent Health assessment from:

- **Patent** to review an individual patent
- **Case** to review patents associated with a selected case
- **Party** to review patents associated with a selected party and role

This makes Patent Health useful both for focused patent review and for screening a larger set of patents connected to litigation.

## Reading the results

The summary cards show:

- number of patents analyzed
- Minor issue count
- Major issue count
- Catastrophic issue count

The patent table lists each analyzed patent together with its issue count and overall state.

Expand a patent row to review the individual findings. Each finding includes:

- **Type**
- **Severity**
- **Assessment**
- **Explanation**

Use the explanation to understand why the issue was flagged and decide whether it requires further research.

## Explore the underlying patent

Patent numbers are linked so you can continue into the Docket Navigator patent profile and review the patent, litigation history, and related records in more detail.

Patent Health is most useful as a screening and prioritization tool. Use the underlying patent and source records when a flagged issue is material to your research or legal analysis.

## Important considerations

Patent Health identifies potential issues from available patent and litigation data. It is not a legal opinion and does not determine whether a patent is valid, enforceable, infringed, or valuable.

An issue may require additional context before it is significant to a particular matter. Likewise, the absence of a flagged issue does not guarantee that no relevant concern exists.

Because Patent Health is an Early Access feature, its coverage and presentation may continue to evolve.

:::note
Analytics tools vary by library. See [Analytics Availability](/analytics/availability/) for current availability.
:::