The Johns Hopkins University

The Johns Hopkins University is a private research university founded in 1876 in Baltimore, Maryland, where it maintains its headquarters. Its legal name is "The Johns Hopkins University," and it is often referred to as Johns Hopkins or JHU. As of fall 2024, the university employed 27,300 total staff and enrolled over 30,000 students across its various divisions. For decades, it has led all U.S. universities in research and development expenditures, with $3.1 billion in R&D spending as of fiscal year 2020.

As America's first research university, Johns Hopkins' primary operations are education and scientific research. The university is organized into ten academic divisions, including the highly-ranked School of Medicine, Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Whiting School of Engineering. Its research has led to significant discoveries and inventions in medicine, public health, and engineering. The university actively commercializes its intellectual property through Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures (JHTV), which manages patent portfolios and licenses technologies to industry partners, a process that has generated over 1,900 licensed technologies and more than 150 startup companies.

The university's patent litigation posture, based on the provided data, is that of an operating entity defending its intellectual property. It has not been recorded as a plaintiff but has appeared as a defendant in two proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). This defensive posture is consistent with a research institution that licenses its own technology and faces challenges to the validity of its patents from licensees or competitors.

The two tracked cases are challenges to the university's patents at the PTAB. In 2024, ITM Isotope Technologies Munich SE filed a petition, and in 2025, GE Healthcare Ltd. filed another. These cases reflect the university's role as a significant patent holder in the medical technology and life sciences sectors, where its research and subsequent patents are relevant to major commercial players.