Trolls are scared to death to file new suits because they might get that IPR tip.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2645272&forum_id=2#26129634)

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1641425

"[D]eclines in GDP and investment are associated with significant increases in overall patent litigation .... In contrast, increases in the TED spread, a measure of macroeconomic financial risk, as well as T-Bill and real interest rates are associated with declines in overall litigation rates .... As such, our study indicates that in recent times overall patent litigation rates may rise or fall depending on the nature of the economic downturn. When productivity declines and decreases in sales dominate capital effects, litigation will tend to rise, and vice-versa."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2645272&forum_id=2#26590324)

And then I'm like "even for aerospace engineers like me?".

Crickets

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2645272&forum_id=2#26590199)

http://www.dww.com/?p=6122

The Fall In Patent Litigation In The US: A Post-Alice Phenomena?

The legal analytics company, Lex Machina, recently released its latest analysis of the status of patent litigation in the US, which reports that the number of new patent cases filed in federal court has dropped by a significant 40% as compared to this time last year. Specifically, while 548 cases were filed in September 2013, plaintiffs filed only 329 new federal patent cases in September 2014.

The data also suggests that there has been a steady decline in patent infringement filings over this past summer from 416 in July to 399 in August to 329 in September, as highlighted by Timothy B. Lee of Vox. Legal scholars such as Lex Machina founder Professor Mark Lemley of Stanford University Law School, have speculated that the drop is likely the aftermath of the US Supreme Court’s (USSC) opinion in Alice v CLS Bank in June 2014, which is demonstrated quite convincingly in Figure 2.

In Alice, as previously reported on by E-TIPS® (see also here and here), the USSC held that merely adding a computer element to an otherwise patent-ineligible “abstract idea” will not be sufficient, on its own, to confer patent eligibility.

Professor Mark Lemley, in an interview with IAM Magazine, highlighted that post-issuance reviews may also help to explain the drop in patent litigation:

[...] the fact that it’s now a lot cheaper to go to the patent office and get IPR or covered business method review, I think a lot of the business model that was driving the growth in litigation which involved suing everybody in the industry with this very broad, general patent is just less attractive than it used to be.

Additionally, as Dennis Crouch pointed out, several other factors may be working in favour of accused infringers. As previously reported on by E-TIPS® here and here, the courts have made it easier to make the loser pay for attorney costs by fee shifting if their cases are weak, and have tightened restrictions on patent applicants by narrowing the scope of inventions being claimed while clarifying the standard of indefiniteness. Although scholars have speculated that a combination of these factors may have played a role in slowing down on complaint filings, they acknowledge that the change and the purported cause cannot be said to be “significant” in the statistical sense based on the limited data as of today.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2645272&forum_id=2#26590267)

Oh what a fortuitous significant decline well short of death!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2645272&forum_id=2#26590339)