Intellectual Property Law

With much fanfare, the Stanford Law School Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse (?IPLC?) was launched on December 1.  The IPLC is a searchable online database that provides statistical information on patent lawsuit filings and outcomes since 2000.  The database also includes copyright and trademark suits, although there is not yet statistical information available on those types of cases, and will in the future include trade secret filings.

While still very much a work in progress, the IPLC yields information that is of interest to, and occasionally may surprise, patent litigators, patent prosecutors, in-house lawyers, company executives and pundits.  Some of the highlights:

• As might be expected, the Eastern District of Texas appears to favor patent owners, so not surprisingly, it has seen a substantial increase in the number of new cases filed; in 2007 it had the most patent case filings ? with the Central District of California second, and the Northern District of California third.
• The Eastern District of Texas was not, contrary to popular wisdom, the most likely jurisdiction for a case to get to trial; that distinction belonged to the District of Delaware, in which the judges have been reluctant to grant summary judgment.
• Also contrary to conventional wisdom, the Northern District of California is not particularly friendly to the accused infringer, as over the past few years plaintiffs have prevailed at trial slightly more often than defendants.
• Overall, accused infringers who take cases to a verdict have won 57% of the time, which again may come as a surprise to many.
• Although the number of patent cases filed has remained relatively constant between 2000 and the present, the number of defendants forced to respond has jumped by about 50% in the last two or three years.  This reflects a significant change in the nature of suits filed, as patent owners now tend to name many companies as defendants in a single suit.

The IPLC makes for interesting and informative surfing and should be added to the arsenal of tools used by patent litigators and decision makers of all kinds.  It can be accessed at http://lexmachina.stanford.edu/patents.  Only registered individuals can use the database, but registration is free and easy.

Today's Blogger:  Bob Sloss