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IP Litigation Clearinghouse launched

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

A press release from MarketWatch titled Stanford Law School Launches Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse notes:

The Law, Science & Technology Program at Stanford Law School today [8 Dec 08] launched the Stanford Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse (IPLC), a first-of-its-kind online database that offers comprehensive information about intellectual property disputes within the United States. This publicly available, online research tool will enable scholars, policymakers, lawyers, judges, and journalists to review real-time data about IP legal disputes that have been filed across the country, and ultimately to analyze the efficacy of the system that regulates patents, copyrights, trademarks, antitrust, and trade secrets.

IPBiz got a chuckle out of quote attributed to Joshua Walker: "The IPLC is agnostic on policy, indifferent to popular myth (from any source), and intensely focused on illuminating empirical reality--the truth--however complex, counterintuitive, or discomfiting about IP litigation." Of popular myth, see 8 JMRIPL 80 (2008).

Yes, Mark Lemley is mentioned. One has:

Already, Lemley has used the data from the IPLC to run a number of empirical studies. He has recently co-authored a working paper with Christopher Cotropia, associate professor of law at University of Richmond School of Law, which debunks the notion that a high number of patent cases brought by plaintiffs involve copying or theft, findings that will be published in early 2009 in the North Carolina Law Review.

"In fact, the percent of these cases involving copying is quite small--only 2 to 3 percent," Lemley said. "These findings have implications for public policy. I believe that the laws and policies we create should address truly widespread, substantial problems ascertained from hard data, rather than those we collectively imagine are happening based on a few anecdotes."

The remark about "based on a few anecdotes" evokes Emerson's aphorism about silverware. ["The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."]

Full post as published by IPBiz on December 08, 2008 (boomark / email).