Patent Law

PatentHawk flames Crouch over patent litigation analysis

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Professor Dennis Crouch: "Over the past two decades, the number of patents being litigated has risen dramatically." Crouch then shows a graph that's clear as mud: one axis labeled "Patent Count;" the other "Year Complaint Was Filed." One has no way of knowing, either by graph or explanation, whether "patent count" represents number of complaints; or number of litigated patents total, irrespective of number of complaints. Regardless what "patent count" means, most damning is failure to normalize: to take into account the number of patents granted.

Crouch commented:

Gary, Thanks for the link. However, I do believe that my graph is fairly easy to understand -- The number of patents associated with complaints filed in a given year.

I have a problem with normalization without also providing the underlying data. In your example, the graph is designed to impart the feeling that Britian's economy is the strongest in the world. It is not.

It would seem in ONE litigation involving N patents, Crouch would add N (rather than one) to his y axis.

This all pales compared to the assumption of Quillen and Webster than no more than one patent could issue from a patent family, which assisted QW in reaching a 97% patent grant rate. See discussion in 88 JPTOS 239 and 88 JPTOS 1068.

See also

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2005/07/quillens-85-grant-rate-number-still.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2007/07/suit-filed-in-ddc-to-remove-margaret.html

Full post as published by IPBiz on March 18, 2008 (boomark / email).