As ANDA Litigation Hits an Eleven-Year Low, Other Operating Company Filings Have Leveled Out
January 26, 2022
Operating companies added 1,179 defendants to patent litigation campaigns in 2021, a 7.9% decrease from the prior year—continuing a general downward trend that began around 2010. However, these data are influenced somewhat by the inclusio...
Read full postReexam Filings Up by 51%, Likely Due to NHK-Fintiv Rule
January 19, 2022
Kathi Vidal now appears likely to be confirmed as USPTO director following the Senate Judiciary Committee’s vote to send her nomination to the full Senate, potentially capping off more than a year during which the agency has lacked a perm...
Read full postNPE Patent Litigation Up by 10% in 2021
January 12, 2022
NPEs closed out 2021 with 2,338 defendants added to patent litigation campaigns—an increase of 9.5% from the 2020 total of 2,135 defendants. As in years past, an outsized chunk of that litigation was filed by affiliates of IP Edge LLC, a ...
Read full postDistrict Courts Tackle Alice Factual Disputes More Frequently at Rule 12
December 29, 2021
The Supreme Court’s Alice decision once provided a key offramp for defendants hoping to avoid lengthy litigation, particularly trial, by challenging patent eligibility at the outset. However, the Federal Circuit’s 2018 Berkheimer and Aa...
Read full postE-Commerce and Software Litigation Saw the Most Alice Activity in Q3
December 22, 2021
A breakdown of district court Alice invalidation rates by market sector (specifically, by the RPX market sector assigned to the litigation in which the patents were asserted and then challenged under Alice) reveals the industries with the m...
Read full postJudge Albright Remained the Top Patent Judge in Q3 as Appellate Pushback on Transfers Continued
December 15, 2021
District Judge Alan D. Albright of the Western District of Texas was once again the nation’s top judge for patent litigation in the third quarter of 2021, with 18% of new patent litigation falling in his courtroom. Judge Albright was trai...
Read full postAlice Remains in Narrowed State Post-Berkheimer as Congress Revives Section 101 Reform Debate
December 8, 2021
Data on patent eligibility rulings reveal that Alice currently remains in a narrowed state as a result of the Federal Circuit’s 2018 Berkheimer and Aatrix decisions, which limited courts’ ability to grant early Section 101 challenges. T...
Read full postAmid a Steady Pace of Litigation and Continued Patent Pickups, IP Edge Tries a Case at the ITC
December 1, 2021
As detailed in RPX’s latest quarterly report, prolific patent monetization firm IP Edge LLC has been responsible for a significant portion of new NPE filings this year—accounting for nearly 26% of the defendants added to litigation thro...
Read full postNHK-Fintiv Rule Pushes Defendants Toward Reexams: More Already Requested This Year Than in All of 2020
November 17, 2021
RPX’s third-quarter review recently detailed how access to America Invents Act (AIA) reviews has been constrained by the NHK-Fintiv rule, which allows the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to discretionarily deny institution based on t...
Read full postVenue Update: West Texas Remains on Top for NPE Litigation, Due Largely to Judge Albright
November 10, 2021
The Western District of Texas and the District of Delaware were essentially tied for first place in Q3 2021 for overall patent litigation, each seeing just over 220 defendants added to litigation campaigns within that period. For NPE litiga...
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