The Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse (IPLC) was originally created by the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology under the combined leadership of faculty director Mark Lemley and Joshua Walker (who served as the IPLC executive director) in collaboration with the Stanford Department of Computer Science. The IPLC has been designed to make IP litigation more transparent, covering all (1) patent infringement, (2) manifest copyright, (3) manifest trademark, (4) manifest antitrust, and (5) certain trade secret lawsuits filed in the U.S. District Court from January 1, 2000 to the present.
Since the IPLC officially launched in December 2008, it has executed the largest patent outcomes study in the history of the United States-for over 25,000 infringement outcomes. It now offers unique analytic systems across over 100,000 intellectual property and antitrust cases. And as of October, 31, 2009 more than 5,000 IP experts and government end users have benefitted from the site, including the White House, Department of Commerce, U.S. District Courts, the Federal Circuit, IPLC advisor groups, over 300 academicians, company and law firm supporters, non-profit lawyers, the National Academies, the National Science Foundation, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Because the IPLC has grown so vast-developing into what is likely to become the largest legal-empirical database in the United States-a separate venture has been spun out to broaden, expand upon, and advance the system. The private venture, Lex Machina, is now offering an advanced version of the IPLC database at www.lexmachina.com, and, furthermore, is hosting the public interest version at www.lexmachina.org, for free to academicians, public interest researchers, judges, policymakers, and members of the media.