Patent cases in US districts courts decline in Q4 2017: study
Statistics published by legal analytics company Lex Machina have shown a drop in patent cases to US district courts for Q4 of 2017.
For the quarter, 981 patent cases were filed, a decrease of 1.3% over Q3.
Furthermore, 4,057 cases were filed in the whole of 2017, representing a larger fall of 10.3% compared to 2016, when 4,529 cases were filed.
US-based Lex Machina highlighted that possibly the most significant event of 2017 was the Supreme Court issuing its opinion in TC Heartland. The decision means that a domestic corporation only “resides” in its state of incorporation.
Lex Machina said: “Since that landmark decision, patent case filings trends have responded dramatically: the number of cases filed in the Eastern District of Texas has significantly declined and been overtaken by the number of cases filed in the District of Delaware.”
Although the District of Delaware experienced the largest increase of cases by numbers for 2017, the District of Massachusetts, the Western and Southern Districts of Texas, and the Western District of Washington all saw large increases in terms of percentage compared to 2016.
At 548 petitions, there was a record high of inter partes review petitions filed in 2017 at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in Q1. However, each following quarter saw a drop in filings, to 438, 381, and 366 for Q4.
Q4 saw nine covered business method reviews filed, contrasting the previous quarter’s record low of only one.
Meanwhile, filings for new trademark cases have been declining, according to Lex Machina, with Q4 continuing this trend. In Q4, 953 cases were filed, compared to 987 in Q3.
Lex Machina divides copyright litigation into two subtypes: file sharing cases and all other types.
File-sharing cases consist of those that have a ‘John Doe’ or anonymous defendant, with accusations based on file-sharing platforms such as BitTorrent.
The number of file-sharing cases in Q4 of 2017 was 367, up from 141 in Q3.
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