By Bruce Berman
With patent litigation down 13% over 2013, and median damages awards just $2.9 million, the lowest in at least 20 years, NPEs are still besting operating companies in damages at trial by more than four fold.
PwC’s 2015 annual patent litigation study, subtitled “A change in patentee fortunes,” is a useful overview of trends in the IP space. The annual study is long on the big picture and short of reasons for changes. There is some attempt this year at a summary page and suggested implications (“Leading Observations”), which runs before the Table of Contents.
Median damages awards for NPEs over the period from 2010-2014 were $8.9M, compared to just $2.0M (page four of the 2015 study) for operating companies (opcos). Reasons for this may include: SMEs that tend to enforce
their patents against competitors, not the deepest pockets, have more modest goals; and simply that NPEs are better at enforcing patents, with more experience targeting big companies than opcos, and are able to identify better quality patents to enforce.
The drop in litigation over 2013, already much discussed, can be attributed to may things, the PTAB and IPRs, Alice, less favorable large damages awards, longer time to trial, etc. Possibly overlooked is that after AIA was instituted in 2012 there was a rush to file suits, possibly to avoid IPR scrutiny.
The 2015 PwC Patent Litigation Study can be found here.
Image source: PwC
[This post originally appeared at IPCloseUp.]
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