Reports

The world of U.S. patent litigation has  changed dramatically in the last five years:  total patent cases filed in district courts have more than doubled since 2008, the American Invents Act was passed in 2011 and took effect in 2012, and cases such as Apple-Samsung have captured headlines with eye-popping damages awards for patent infringement in widely used products. This report draws on Lex Machina’s unique and rich Legal Analytics data on U.S. District Courts and judges, law firms, parties, patents, case merits decisions, damages awards, and International Trade Commission (ITC) investigations and Administrative Law Judges (ALJs).

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In 2011 Congress directed the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study the effects of non-practicing entities (NPEs) on patent litigation. The GAO turned to Lex Machina’s extensive data set on patent cases to carry out the study and to illuminate the role that these NPEs have played over the last five years.

Relying on Lex Machina’s data, the GAO’s analysis of a representative sample of 500 lawsuits from 2007 to 2011 concluded that the number of overall defendants in patent infringement lawsuits increased […]

Lex Machina worked with Santa Clara University Law School Professor Colleen Chien to identify the home state of all defendants in International Trade Commission cases from January 2011 through June 2012. This map was presented to Congress by Professor Chien in her testimony regarding The International Trade Commission and Patent Disputes, given to the House Committee on the Judiciary on July 18, 2012.

Cited in Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and other foreign press, Lex Machina uncovers all district court cases filed from 2006 through 2011 against mobile handset manufacturers in which a mobile handset was the accused product.

Congress  has  essentially  asked  the  U.S.  Patent  and  Trademark  Office  an  impossible question: What would happen if prior user rights were implemented in the United States? More concretely, it has asked as to the impact of this defense on innovation, and as to non-U.S. implementations of prior user rights.  But problems exist with both approaches.  Future innovation rates are hard to predict.   Foreign data may be hard to gather comprehensively. Moreover,  the  application  of  prior  user  rights  in  exogenous  procedural  environments  (i.e., foreign  courts)  may  be  misleading.  A  better  approach  […]

Lex Machina investigates trends in generic drug litigation from January 1, 2006 to August 1, 2011. Using several basic econometric specifications, the study reviews settlement and other outcomes in ANDA litigation.

In a comprehensive study on the inequitable conduct defense, Lex Machina reports on inequitable conduct findings in federal district court patent litigation cases terminated between January 1, 2005 and May 31, 2010. The study covers pleadings, summary judgment, trial, post-trial, and appellate events and analyzes event phase and termination data.

In a peer company study, Lex Machina reports on settlement trends for large tech companies, comparing companies' total number of settlements and their likelihood of settlement.