Patent Litigation Loss Drift
In plain terms
Patent-lawsuit signal -- currently inactive. We can see which companies are in patent suits but the free CourtListener feed does not tell us who won or the exact verdict date, so we cannot trade the win/lose direction the research describes. The family is paused (no signals) until that data is added.
How it works
Bessen-Meurer 2008 JEP documents a directional post-resolution drift on patent-suit defendants (defendant_win -> relief rally; plaintiff_win -> damages/injunction drag). That directional verdict edge is NOT implemented: the CourtListener v4 feed provides no winner classification and discards the termination date, so neither the verdict direction nor the paper's resolution-date entry anchor is available. Until a true terminated_date column exists, the only leak-safe signal is the case-end (termination) event itself, treated as an undirected long-side drift on the defendant.
Data dependencies
- Daily prices
Adjusted-close OHLCV for every US-listed ticker; primary price feed.
- Patent litigation
A data feed this strategy reads, refreshed on its normal schedule.
Expected edge
- Reported return
- +/-2-5%
- Tested over
- T+0 to T+90d
+/-2-5% over 30-90d.
Example tickers where this is likely to fire
Illustrative only, the signal fires based on the live data, not a fixed list.
Related families
Markets under-react when companies are granted high-value patents (measured by 3-day stock reaction at grant). Firms with valuable recent patents outperform by 3-5%/yr.
When a company's patent portfolio shifts into new technology classes (e.g. legacy hardware -> AI), it's signaling a real pivot. The stock outperforms over the next 1-2 years.
Explore Patent Litigation Loss Drift on alphactor.ai
See which tickers this family is currently firing on, with live signals and rankings.