On February 8, 2024, Lex Machina hosted a webcast on the recently released 2024 Patent Report. The webcast featured guest speakers Michael Flynn (Partner at Morris Nichols Arsht & Tunnell), Michael Connelly (President of WIT Legal), and Elaine Chow (Lex Machina’s Legal Data Expert in Patent Litigation and editor of the report), moderated by Aria Nejad (Lex Machina’s In-house Counsel). They discussed overarching trends in patent litigation including case filing, most active judges and venues, top law firms and parties, timing, case resolutions, findings, damages, and more. They also discussed emerging trends in PTAB litigation and federal appellate patent litigation. Their analysis demonstrated how using Legal Analytics can enhance your practice when litigating patent disputes.
In discussing the shifting case filing trends in different district courts, Michael Flynn noted, “[the] great thing about Lex Machina is you can drill down on these numbers a little bit more. I went and looked, and by the end of 2023, less than half of those 2023 cases filed in Western District of Texas were still active cases. So, they’re coming and going pretty quickly in that district.”
In analyzing the most active parties in patent litigation, Michael Connelly observed, “In the expert side of things, we like to look at different industries and see what the activities there are and which companies are the most active there. So we are starting to use the industry tag that you’ve got, the NAICS code tag, which lets you move away from the people that dominate like a Cedar Lane or Bell or Patent Armory this year to specific industries and see both sides of who is suing . . . . It is often very helpful for us to see in an industry what’s happening with automotive now versus last year or just this month.”
In opining on using hard data versus anecdotal evidence, Michael Connelly said, “I’m a big fan of it . . . . You can drill down for a judge, for a district, a judge in a certain type of technology . . . . I think that can be very powerful to challenge a lot of these assumptions we carry with us because of anecdotes. Every case is its own unique animal, but I do think [data] can be very helpful as an intelligence tool to work with clients on expectations. We haven’t really touched on it, but a lot of the timing you can drill down on can be very helpful for billing and setting expectations with clients as well.”
Listen to a recording of the webcast or read the transcript.