It’s been reported in a few places that a recent Lex Machina report states that patent litigation is down 40% from last year. Of course, the patent trolls are trying to use these inaccurate reports to argue that the patent trollAn entity in the business of being infringed — by analogy to the mythological troll that exacted payments from the unwary. Cf. NPE, PAE, PME. See Reitzig and Henkel, Patent Trolls, the Sustainability of ‘Locking-in-to-Extort’ Strategies, and Implications for Innovating Firms. problem is essentially solved.
Actually, the report says that the month of September in 2014 is down 40% compared to the month of September in 2013. The total number of patent litigations for the year is down compared to the same point last year, but it’s down 15%, not 40%, which is a big difference.
Here’s a chart showing patent litigations filed year to date as of each month, comparing 2013 and 2014 (with linear projections for 2014 for the last 3 months of the year):
Looking at the trend since 2008, it looks like 2013 was a spike. The overall trend is still up:
And as far as patent trollAn entity in the business of being infringed — by analogy to the mythological troll that exacted payments from the unwary. Cf. NPE, PAE, PME. See Reitzig and Henkel, Patent Trolls, the Sustainability of ‘Locking-in-to-Extort’ Strategies, and Implications for Innovating Firms. cases go, pretty much every single study except one (the widely cited GAO report which I largely debunked last year) shows that patent trollAn entity in the business of being infringed — by analogy to the mythological troll that exacted payments from the unwary. Cf. NPE, PAE, PME. See Reitzig and Henkel, Patent Trolls, the Sustainability of ‘Locking-in-to-Extort’ Strategies, and Implications for Innovating Firms. cases have grown to be 50–60% of all patent cases filed. (I note that the paper by Cotropia, Kesan, and Schwartz was cited with glee by anti-patent reformers when a preliminary draft showed a lower proportion of patent trollAn entity in the business of being infringed — by analogy to the mythological troll that exacted payments from the unwary. Cf. NPE, PAE, PME. See Reitzig and Henkel, Patent Trolls, the Sustainability of ‘Locking-in-to-Extort’ Strategies, and Implications for Innovating Firms. cases. After the final version was revised to show over 50% of patent cases are filed by patent trolls, the paper has mysteriously vanished from anti-reform arguments.)
The fact that patent trolls are pausing slightly to assess the changing landscape is hardly a reason to celebrate victory. So long as there’s money to be made in the business of patent litigation, patent trolls will continue suing.