Litigation Against Copycats and Counterfeiters Surged Onward in Q4

RPX’s latest quarterly report shows that litigation from operating company plaintiffs went up by nearly 17% last year, with an even greater increase (38%) in the fourth quarter.

However, this data exclude another distinct category of litigation filed by a small group of design and utility patent owners targeting copycats and counterfeiters selling products online. RPX excludes such “e-seller” cases from analyses of district court litigation because they tend to follow a different dynamic compared to what one might consider the usual patent suit. These e-seller cases sometimes name hundreds of defendant entities, many of which may be merely online storefronts or aliases for the same ultimate parent. Also, plaintiffs primarily seek injunctive relief instead of damages, and their cases often end with the e-seller defendant’s failure to answer, followed by a default judgment.

This category of litigation, which began to spike in Q3 2020, is shown in grey below to illustrate its magnitude. As shown by the rightmost bar, e-seller litigation in Q4 2024 accounted for 2,679 defendants added, or 76% of all litigation during the quarter—though this number remains subject to the caveat about defendants potentially having multiple online storefronts noted above.

See RPX’s fourth-quarter review for more on the trends that shaped district court litigation in Q4 and 2024.