Lex Machina Releases First-Ever Patent Litigation Damages Report

Arms IP litigators and executives with insights and trends to inform case strategies and tactics

Menlo Park, CA, June 25, 2014 – Today Lex Machina, a provider of Legal Analytics® for law firms and companies, released the first-ever Patent Litigation Damages Report. The paper analyzes both total (cumulative) and median damages awarded in 36,629 patent cases filed and terminated from 2000 through 2013.

While only 708 cases (1.9 percent) involve damage awards, total awards made in these cases involved significant dollar amounts. Over $15 billion in damages, fees, costs and interest have been awarded over the past 14 years, comprised of $13 billion in compensatory damages, almost $1 billion in enhanced damages and over $200 million in attorneys’ fees.

The 10 largest awards, including three for $1 billion or more, account for nearly half the $15 billion total, while the median compensatory award of around $400,000 is far less than the typical cost of litigating a patent case to verdict. It highlights a disconnect between the $3-5M required to take a patent case through trial and the remote chances of recovering that amount as damages. The 75-page report, drawing on data from Lex Machina’s specialized intellectual property litigation database, analyzes these damages across districts, judges, parties and law firms.

“Despite the increasing number of arguments and lawsuits, there’s a lack of reliable, unbiased data on the patterns and trends about patent litigation in America,” said Owen Byrd, Lex Machina’s chief evangelist and general counsel. “The Patent Litigation Damages Report seeks to provide patent litigators with information that can inform individual case strategies and tactics, and help produce favorable results.”

Corporate executives as well as litigators will find the report’s unique analysis of millions of pieces of Federal Court data invaluable in the development of enterprise-wide intellectual property strategies, the evaluation of new patent issues, and case-related decision-making. Organizations now have easy access to reliable information that can help ensure their investment in a patent litigation case is proportional to a likely outcome.

Register to download Lex Machina’s Patent Litigation Damages Report  to see all the data and analysis.

About Lex Machina
Lex Machina is defining Legal Analytics, a new category of legal technology that revolutionizes how companies and law firms compete in the business and practice of law. Delivered as SaaS (Software-as-a-Service), Lex Machina creates structured data sets covering judges, lawyers, parties and patents out of millions of pages of legal information. This allows law firms and companies for the first time ever to predict the behaviors and outcomes that different legal strategies will produce, enabling them to craft successful strategies, win cases and close business.

Lex Machina has more than 100 customers, including companies like Google and eBay and law firms like Wilson Sonsini and Fenwick & West. The company is supported by top tech companies and law firms, and was created by experts at Stanford’s Computer Science Department and Law School.