Company Overview
The Regents of the University of California is the legal name for the governing board of the University of California (UC), a public land-grant university system in California. Founded on March 23, 1868, its headquarters are in Oakland, California. The University of California system is a major public institution, with a budget of $53.6 billion for 2024–2025. It is a large employer with a workforce of over 260,000 academic and administrative staff as of early 2025, and a total student enrollment of over 300,000.
Products and Services
As a public university system, the University of California's primary operations are education, research, and public service. The system comprises 10 campuses, six academic health centers, and is involved in the management of three U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories (Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, and Los Alamos). Its campuses offer a wide range of undergraduate, graduate, and professional degree programs across approximately 170 academic disciplines. A significant part of its mission involves conducting extensive research, with expenditures of almost $9 billion in 2023, which leads to the creation of intellectual property, including patents. The university licenses these technologies to commercial entities in exchange for royalties and other payments.
Patent Litigation Posture
The Regents of the University of California is an operating entity that generates its own intellectual property through its research activities. The single tracked case as a plaintiff and zero cases as a defendant indicates a patent enforcement posture focused on protecting its own inventions, often in collaboration with its commercial licensees, rather than that of a non-practicing entity (NPE). Universities typically do not have active programs to monitor for infringement and often engage in litigation that is led and funded by a licensee. The tracked case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, a common venue for pharmaceutical patent litigation.
Notable Cases and Context
The one tracked case is Astellas Pharma Inc. et al. v. Haimen Pharma Inc. et al., filed in 2025. In this action, The Regents of the University of California is a co-plaintiff alongside pharmaceutical company Astellas Pharma. The litigation involves patents for the prostate cancer drug Xtandi (enzalutamide), which was developed based on university research. The Regents, as the patent holder, joined its exclusive licensee Astellas in an infringement suit against generic drug manufacturers that filed Abbreviated New Drug Applications (ANDAs) to market generic versions of the drug. This type of litigation is common for research universities, which often partner with industry to commercialize inventions and must defend the resulting patents to protect the revenue streams that support their educational and research missions.