Use a Docket Navigator Court Profile to research a court's case history, motion outcomes, decisions, timing, parties and firms, case outcomes, and the underlying litigation records.
A Court Profile is a pre-built Docket Navigator research workspace centered on one court.
Use a Court Profile to understand the litigation history of a court, research how motions and legal issues have been handled there, review the parties and firms that appear in its cases, examine historical timing and outcomes, and move from a chart or statistic to the underlying cases and decisions.
Docket Navigator builds the profile from the data available for the selected court. The profile can combine record-level searches, analytics, comparison views, and source-linked litigation data in a binder.
What you can do with a Court Profile
Section titled “What you can do with a Court Profile”Court Profiles support research tasks that arise in venue analysis, motion practice, hearing preparation, matter intake, competitive intelligence, and research support. They can help answer questions such as:
- What kinds of cases has this court handled, and how has its caseload changed over time?
- How has this court historically ruled on a particular type of motion or legal issue?
- Which orders contain substantive analysis of the issue I am researching?
- How long have cases in this court taken to reach important Litigation Milestones?
- How long have particular types of motions historically remained pending before decision?
- Which parties, firms, and attorneys have appeared most often in this court?
- What types of IP disputes, technologies, claims, or rights have been litigated in this court?
- What Determinations, Remedies, Claim Constructions, or other significant decisions has Docket Navigator recorded for this court?
- How do selected historical outcomes or timing measures for this court compare with a broader population where the profile provides a baseline?
- Which underlying cases and decisions should I review before relying on a percentage, trend, or timing figure?
These questions can support an attorney evaluating a forum or preparing for motion practice, a librarian responding to a court-research request, or a paralegal assembling case history, decisions, and timing information for a matter.
Open a Court Profile
Section titled “Open a Court Profile”Open Profile Search, choose Court, and select the court you want to research.
Court Profiles can also open from linked court names in Docket Navigator search results and other research views.
Get oriented on the court’s litigation history
Section titled “Get oriented on the court’s litigation history”The Court Profile provides a high-level view of the litigation Docket Navigator has associated with the selected court.
Depending on the available data, the profile can bring together information such as:
- case history and active cases;
- litigation activity over time;
- decisions and orders;
- motion outcomes;
- Case Outcomes;
- Determinations and Remedies;
- Claim Constructions and other issue-specific records;
- parties and firms appearing in the court;
- timing to Litigation Milestones;
- motion pendency;
- subject-matter, claim, or technology experience.
The overview and analytics are summary layers. Use the profile’s record-level searches when you need to identify the individual cases, orders, or documents behind a number.
Research motion practice in the court
Section titled “Research motion practice in the court”Court Profiles can be used to study how motions and legal issues have been handled historically in the selected court.
A motion analysis can be narrowed using criteria such as:
- Type of Document, which identifies the kind of motion, filing, order, or other document;
- Posture of Motion, which describes the procedural setting in which the motion was presented;
- Result of Motion, which identifies how the motion was resolved;
- Legal Issue, which identifies substantive reasoning or analysis of a procedural or substantive legal concept;
- filing dates, case characteristics, technologies, parties, or other available criteria.
These criteria answer different research questions. Use Type of Document when you need the processed rulings on a particular motion type. Use Legal Issue when you need decisions containing substantive analysis of the selected legal concept.
Motion Success
Section titled “Motion Success”Motion Success views summarize the historical outcomes of selected decisions in the court and can show how those outcomes change over time.
Docket Navigator has more than one analytics implementation for motion-outcome research, so the categories and denominator can depend on the specific view. Some Motion Success by Year views include Granted, Denied, Partial, and Other outcomes. Current court Motion Success dashboards focus on Granted, Denied, and Partial decisions.
Treat the active criteria and the labels shown in the current chart as part of the calculation. Two Motion Success views can represent different populations even when they address the same general motion type.
Historical grant and denial percentages describe the selected past decisions. They do not predict how the court will resolve a future motion.
Find the decisions behind a court-level trend
Section titled “Find the decisions behind a court-level trend”Court Profiles can provide record-level research for decisions associated with the selected court.
Depending on the available data, these records can include:
- orders;
- Determinations;
- Remedies;
- Claim Constructions;
- institutions or other tribunal decisions;
- motion-specific decision sets.
Decision searches use the selected court as part of their criteria and can include additional filters that define the particular view.
This makes it possible to move from a broad question such as:
How often has this court granted this type of motion?
to:
Which orders produced that result?
and then:
Which of those orders discuss the legal issue or fact pattern I care about?
For important legal conclusions, review the underlying decisions rather than relying only on an aggregate result.
Review the court’s cases and subject-matter experience
Section titled “Review the court’s cases and subject-matter experience”Court Profiles can provide the cases associated with the selected court and, where available, a view limited to active cases.
Case history can help you understand:
- the volume of recorded litigation in the court;
- activity over time;
- the types of matters the court has handled;
- the IP rights, technologies, or claims represented in those matters;
- the parties and firms that regularly appear there;
- current matters that may produce new decisions relevant to your research.
In patent research, the Court Profile can provide deeper views of asserted patents, Patent Technologies, Claim Constructions, Determinations, and Remedies. Other practice areas use the structured data available for those matters.
Case counts should be interpreted with the selected time period, subject matter, and other active criteria in mind.
Research parties and firms appearing in the court
Section titled “Research parties and firms appearing in the court”Court Profiles can summarize the parties and firms that have appeared in cases before the selected court.
This can help answer questions such as:
- Has this client or opponent litigated in this court before?
- Which firms have the most experience in matters filed here?
- Which parties appear most frequently in a selected litigation role?
- How does that experience change when the research is limited to a particular time period, technology, claim, or type of matter?
In patent research, party and firm views can distinguish roles such as Patentee and Patent Challenger.
Counts in these views reflect appearances in cases matching the active criteria. They measure recorded experience in the selected matters, not the quality of a party’s or firm’s performance.
Understand historical case outcomes
Section titled “Understand historical case outcomes”Court Profiles can include Case Outcome analytics for cases associated with the selected court.
Where a comparison baseline is provided, the Court Profile can place the court’s recorded Case Outcomes beside a broader population, such as all U.S. District Court patent cases represented by that analysis.
The comparison population, date range, forum, outcome categories, and other filters are part of the result. Check those criteria before interpreting a difference between the selected court and the baseline.
Case Outcome charts use the documented lower-court outcome and exclude post-appeal outcomes from the charted Case Outcome calculation. Appeal results should be reviewed separately when later procedural history matters.
Historical outcome differences provide context about the selected cases. They do not establish that the court caused those outcomes or predict the result of a future case.
Understand timing in the court
Section titled “Understand timing in the court”Court Profiles can include historical timing analytics for case progression and motion decision timing.
Time to Milestones
Section titled “Time to Milestones”Time to Milestones measures the time from case filing to selected Litigation Milestones for cases associated with the court.
Depending on the available data, Litigation Milestones can include events such as claim construction, trial, appeal-related events, or other significant stages of a matter.
The analysis can report aggregate measures such as average and median time. These figures describe the historical cases included by the active criteria and do not predict when a particular current case will reach the same milestone.
Motion Pendency
Section titled “Motion Pendency”Motion Pendency can be used to examine how long selected types of motions historically remained pending before a decision in the court.
This can provide useful context when developing a case timeline, preparing a client update, or responding to a research request about the pace of a particular type of motion.
The selected motion type, date range, posture, and other criteria are part of the result.
How the Court Profile is scoped
Section titled “How the Court Profile is scoped”Docket Navigator constructs Court Profile searches and analytics using criteria for the selected court.
Case-history and milestone searches use the selected court as part of the case criteria. Decision-level searches associate the court with the relevant orders or events. Individual views can add other criteria, such as case status, Type of Document, Posture of Motion, motion type, issue, or date.
For example:
- an Active Cases view can add an active-case status criterion;
- a motion-specific analysis can add the relevant motion type and posture;
- a stay or transfer analysis can add criteria for the specific procedural event being researched.
The active criteria define the result. When a profile-derived search is editable or copied into another binder, changing those criteria can narrow or broaden the research beyond the original Court Profile.
Stipulated data
Section titled “Stipulated data”Some Court Profile summary analytics distinguish stipulated events from contested decisions.
In supported views, stipulated events are excluded by default so the analysis focuses on events decided by the court. The user can include stipulated data in certain analyses.
Check the current filters or controls when the distinction between agreed events and contested decisions affects the research question.
Inspect the underlying cases and decisions
Section titled “Inspect the underlying cases and decisions”Court Profile research supports drill-down from a summary or statistic to the litigation records behind it.
A common research path is:
Court Profile → motion, timing, outcome, or case-history view → filtered cases or decisions → underlying order or document
Analytics that support drill-down can open a search based on the criteria represented by a chart value. Record-level results can then be used to inspect the cases, orders, Determinations, Remedies, Claim Constructions, or other records included in the result.
For court research, the underlying decisions are especially important because they provide the facts, posture, reasoning, and legal issues behind an aggregate court-level statistic.
Save or monitor Court Profile research
Section titled “Save or monitor Court Profile research”A live Court Profile is built for the selected court when the profile is opened.
Use Save As when you want to preserve or extend the research. The saved copy becomes a normal user binder containing the profile-derived research included in the copy. You can add searches, organize tabs, change editable criteria, and save later changes independently.
Alerts operate on alertable record-level searches. When an alert is created from Court Profile research, the court criteria remain part of the monitored search. This can be useful for following new cases, orders, or other records associated with the court.
Analytics charts themselves are not the alert target.