Substantial Amount of Anticounterfeit Litigation Hit the Courts in Late 2021

RPX’s latest quarterly review details in part how operating companies added 1,179 defendants to patent litigation campaigns in 2021, a 7.9% decrease from the prior year. However, these operating company data exclude a distinct category of litigation filed by a small group of design and utility patent owners targeting copycats and counterfeiters selling products online.

RPX now excludes such cases from analyses of district court litigation because they tend not to follow the same dynamic as what most companies would consider a typical patent suit: such cases sometimes name hundreds of defendant entities, many of which may be online storefronts for the same ultimate parent. Additionally, plaintiffs mainly seek injunctive relief instead of damages, and their cases often end in default judgments.

This category of litigation, which first began to spike in Q3 2020, is shown in grey below to illustrate its magnitude. While it can sometimes be unclear whether the numerous defendants named in these suits exist as legally distinct entities, their cumulative magnitude remains significant—well outstripping the number of defendants added by NPEs and traditional operating company plaintiffs in the fourth quarter.

See RPX’s review of the fourth quarter and 2021 for a deep dive on other trends impacting patent litigation and the patent marketplace.