Posts Tagged: "lex Machina"

For those of you that do ANDA litigation, as well as other types of patent litigation, you know that ANDA litigation is very different. How a judge reacts to a particular motion in ANDA litigation is not necessarily how he or she might deal with the same motion in an electrical, mechanical or software case. Because of this substantial difference, Lex Machina decided to separately tag over 2,500 ANDA cases filed since January 1, 2000. Thus, for the first time, litigators can make decisions based solely on reviewing the ANDA cases that a specific judge has handled.

The way that many plaintiffs argue damages has always amazed me, and this shift to reasonable royalties at least somewhat vindicates my long held position. The law on lost profits makes it extremely difficult for a patentee to prevail, although historically lost profits has been where big awards have come. Still, reasonable royalties are guaranteed as a minimum for a victorious plaintiff. I have long believed that spending more time making a compelling reasonable royalty case and painstakingly establishing the reason a reasonable, yet high royalty would pay dividends. I suspect this is particularly true in a world where there are over 7 billion people and counting, and by some estimates the number of mobile phones is predicted to surpass the number of people on the planet by the end of 2014. There were over 1 billion smartphones purchased in 2013. The sheer numbers of devices that can infringe are staggering.

According to data from Lex Machina, in 2013, average patent infringement awards increased 28% and median patent infringement awards increased 22% when compared with infringement damages awards during 2012. The question for in-house attorneys, as well as for plaintiffs attorneys, is whether this trend will continue in 2014 and beyond.

Trials were held in 128 patent cases in 2013, including 52 bench trials and 63 jury trials. Thirteen cases involved both bench and jury trials. Over half of all trials were held in the District of Delaware (25), the Eastern District of Texas (25) or the Southern District of New York (17). Cases went to trial fastest in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania; its 255-day median time to trial was approximately 12 times faster than the 2,423 days it took a case to get to trial in the Western District of New York, the slowest district.

On May 16th, AOP announced that Iraqi war veteran, Jason Maples was the winner of its first ever AOP Vets Program. Jason was one of more than 20 other Veterans who participated in the six week program consisting of intensive education and training in patent research, web-based career learning sessions and competitive research projects. Not only did he win a $2,500 cash reward for his success in the study he partook in but also was awarded $5,000 for his overall performance. I had the pleasure of sitting down to talk with Jason recently and following is our exchange: