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Troll Call and Other Statistics for December 2007

By Troll Tracker

We reached the end of 2007. All the other blogs are reporting an overall decrease in IP litigation, a cutback from 2006, or are reporting the slightest of increases in patent filings from 2006 to 2007. That's simply not true. By the real count -- the number of defendants sued for patent infringement -- 2007 was a record year. In fact, here's my headline: "2007 shows a 30% increase in patent litigation over 2006, fueled by a 40% increase in the Eastern District of Texas." And certainly from the number of patent cases brought by non-practicing entities and so-called patent trolls, it was a year that saw a tremendous increase in both the quantity and diversity of these entities.

Before we go on, let's explore statistics for a minute. Say in 2006 there are 25 lawsuits, each against 1 defendant. Then in 2007, there are 20 lawsuits, each against 5 defendants. 25 defendants sued 1 year, 100 the next. The patentees could have filed 100 lawsuits, and in effect, did do so. Why isn't that a 4-fold increase? Yet people look just at the number of cases filed, which gets them to declare a 20% decrease.

This month, I'd like to start with the 2007 year-end statistics. Here's what I have compiled:

As a disclaimer, these numbers are taken raw from PACER/ECF without my usual investigation to make sure they aren't a transfer/duplicate/etc. But since I'm comparing several years, there needs to be an apples-to-apples comparison, and I'm not about to go look at every case in 2006!One other disclaimer: I didn't actually count every defendant in every case. I took the top jurisdictions, counted them, and extrapolated. The ones I counted constituted over two-thirds of the patent cases, so if my number of defendants is off, it's not off by much. Plus, the same extrapolation method was used for all three years I compare below.

With those disclaimers out of the way, this is what the data shows when looking at the national patent infringement statistics:

• In 1990, there were 921 patent cases nationwide (1 in EDTX), and 1,596 defendants sued (1 in EDTX).


• In 2006, there were 2,822 patent cases nationwide (264 in EDTX), and 6,118 defendants sued (996 in EDTX).


• In 2007, there were 2,953 patent cases nationwide (364 in EDTX), and 8,045 defendants sued (1,402 in EDTX).


• Comparing 2007 to 2006, nationwide there was a 4.6% increase in patent cases (I have read 6% elsewhere), but there was a 31.5% increase in the number of defendants sued for patent infringement.


• Comparing 2007 to 2006 just for the Eastern District of Texas, there was a 37.9% increase in the number of patent cases, and there was a 40.8% increase in the number of defendants sued for patent infringement.


• Comparing 2007 to 1990, nationwide there has been over a tripling in the number of patent cases (+221%), and a quintupling in the number of defendants sued for patent infringement (+404%).


• In 1990, the Eastern District of Texas accounted for roughly 1/100 of all national patent cases, and less than 1/100 of all defendants sued.


• By 2007, those EDTX numbers had grown to being roughly 1/8 of all national patent cases and 1/5 of all defendants sued.

I say pshaw to the notion that patent infringement increased only 4-6% in 2007. Look at the defendants sued: there was over a 30% increase this past year. That's the number that matters. Now where will 2008 fall?

Let's next turn to the numbers from December for the 7 districts I have been highlighting this year.

December statistics

ED Texas: 21 patent cases, 82 defendants sued (11 troll cases)
CD California: 21 patent cases, 82 defendants sued (6 troll cases)
D New Jersey: 11 patent cases, 20 defendants sued (0 troll cases)
D Delaware: 19 patent cases, 40 defendants sued (2 troll cases)
ND Illinois: 12 patent cases, 30 defendants sued (3 troll cases)
ND California: 4 patent cases, 9 defendants sued (0 troll cases)
SD New York: 7 patent cases, 11 defendants sued (1 troll cases)

December was the first month this year that another district rivaled the Eastern District of Texas in both cases filed and defendants sued.

Non-EDTX Troll/NPE Cases

There were some interesting non-practicing entity /troll cases filed outside of the Eastern District of Texas in December. Some were very interesting. For the first month since I started the blog, I have more "NPE" cases outside of EDTX than I do inside. A preview of life after venue reform, perhaps? Here are the highlights:

1) Document Generation Corp. v. AllMeds, and 18 other defendants (SDIL, December 4). I featured this case here.

2) Action Technologies, LLC v. Avid Technology, Inc. (SDNY, December 4). Action is sub of General Patent Corp., according to the statement it filed with the court in New York. I profiled GPC here.

3) Global Patent Holdings, LLC v. ADT, and 6 other defendants (SDFL, December 5). I featured this case here.

4) Innovative Patented Technologies, LLC v. Nokia & Samsung (SDFL, December 5). Scott Harris, J-Beau, and Niro. Blogged it here.

5-8) Network Signatures, Inc. v. Bank of America Corp. (CDCA, December 10).
Network Signatures, Inc. v. Wachovia Corp. (CDCA, December 10).
Network Signatures, Inc. v. Wells Fargo & Co. (CDCA, December 10).
Network Signatures, Inc. v. Washington Mutual Bank (CDCA, December 10). You might think by looking at Network Signatures' website that I have incorrectly included these four cases as "non-practicing entity" cases. But there's more here than meets the eye. I'll elaborate more in a special spotlight on these cases next Tuesday. I'll add a forward link here once I create that post.

9) Guardian Media Technologies, Ltd. v. Daewoo Electronics Corp. (CDCA, December 18). Guardian Media is a Texas limited partnership that bought two patents in 2003, and has sued a bunch of companies. It is in patent litigation all over, and the patent-in-suit is in ex parte reexamination. This lawsuit was filed two months after the PTO issued an 81-page office action rejecting the claims of the patent-in-suit as invalid.

10) PSN Illinois, LLC v. Abcam, Inc., Abgent, Inc., Affinity Bioreagents, Inc., Discoverx Corp., Exalpha Biologicals, Inc., Genetex, Inc., LifeSpan Biosciences, Inc., Multispan, Inc., and Novus Biologicals, Inc. (NDIL, December 21). An old troll friend returns! PSN Illinois is a shell. I'm not sure who owns it, but Chicago-area attorney Michael Mazza represented it in 3 prior patent litigations. 2 of the 3 prior PSN Illinois litigations were over pet litter patents, and the other one over porcelain veneer restoration materials. This new case asserts two patents titled "Molecular Cloning and Expression of G-Protein Coupled Receptors." It's safe to say that if you have a single entity asserting pet litter, porcelain veneer, and molecular cloning patent, it's a troll. And in this case, a BIOTROLL. The inventor of the two patents-in-suit is now a University of Cincinnati professor. He evidently sold his patents back in September 2007.

11) Fifth Market Inc. v. CME Group Inc. (Del, December 21). 5th Market is a failed startup. I found this article from 1999 interviewing some of the inventors of the now-asserted patent. The inventors generally list 5th Market in their LinkedIn profiles as being a past job. But the first-named inventor, Scott Nieboer, still seems to run this website from his office in Nashville, where he also runs a few other businesses - investment businesses. Here is the cached "management" page from the old Fifth Market website. My conclusion? A once-company, now a shell being monetized.

12) Wall Corporation v. BondDesk Group LLC (Del., December 26). I'm really not sure about this one. The first-named inventor, Webster Hughes of Charlotte, NC, was in upper management at X-Bond, the company that first owned the patent-in-suit. Then in September 2004 the patent was assigned to Wall Corp of Greenwich, CT, a company I can find nothing about. Now Wall Corp lists its address as the same as the law firm that filed the suit - Shore Chan Bragalone, of Dallas. Shore Chan is a firm I have featured as representing Acacia. This one has a general smell of a troll case about it, but I can't say for sure. Since there's nothing about Wall anywhere I can find, I'm putting it at least in the NPE camp for now.

13) Zappos.com v. Global Patent Holdings (DNV, December 26) (DJ). See here.

14) Meirav Kesher Hadadi, Ltd. v. Zipcar Inc., Mobility Inc. d/b/a Flexcar, and I-Go (NDIL, December 28). The plaintiff is an Israeli shell corporation set up by the Israeli inventor of the car rental patent. One of the defendants, I-Go, is Chicago's only non-profit car sharing service. It actually seems like a pretty cool idea -- the defendants' idea, that is, not the plaintiff's patent, the claims of which seem stretched to be able to capture the accused "product."

15) Innovative Patented Technology, LLC v. Motorola (NDIL, December 31). I profiled this case here.

16) Harvard Label v. Advanced Card Technologies LLC (CDCA, December 31) (DJ). According to ACT's website, it is a subsidiary of General Patent Corp.

Cumulative Statistics for 2007

Here are the cumulative statistics for all of 2007, comparing the various "big 7" districts.

ED Texas: 364 patent cases, 1,402 defendants sued (151 troll cases)
CD California: 272 patent cases, 729 defendants sued (23 troll cases)
D New Jersey: 187 patent cases, 349 defendants sued (13 troll cases)
D Delaware: 147 patent cases, 350 defendants sued (18 troll cases)
ND Illinois: 137 patent cases, 261 defendants sued (26 troll cases)
ND California: 131 patent cases, 249 defendants sued (19 troll cases)
SD New York: 102 patent cases, 255 defendants sued (14 troll cases)

That's one patent case filed a day in the Eastern District of Texas. 28 defendants sued a week! Twice as many as any other district. Over 150 troll cases (41%).

Here is my last "troll call" for 2007 - the December cases. I'm planning a little bit of a change for 2008, by the way. While EDTX still drives the troll cases, I no longer plan to track EDTX and non-EDTX troll cases separately. Starting with January's troll call, everything will be merged. Hopefully that will make this sort of post more readable.

Troll Call for December 2007 in EDTX

141) Klausner Technologies v. Apple, AT&T, AT&T Mobility, CSC Holdings, Comcast, eBay, GotVoice, Simulscribe (Marshall, December 3). Dovel & Luner filed this lawsuit, which I blogged about here.

142) epicRealm Licensing, LLC v. The Macerich Co. (Texarkana, December 3). epicRealm made my original blog post, at #6, from way back in January. This case is one that Judge Folsom ordered to be bifurcated from the original one.

143) Typhoon Touch Technologies, Inc. v. Motion Computing, Inc., Dell, Inc., Nova Mobility Systems (Tyler, December 5). This looks like a once-company that has gone over to the dark side.

144) Tessera, Inc. v. A-DATA Technology Co., A-DATA Technology USA, Acer, Inc., Acer America, Centon Electronics, Elipida Memory, Elipida Memory USA, International Products Sourcing Group, Kingston Technology Co., Nanya Technology Corp., Nanya Technology USA, Peripheral Devices & Products Systems, Powerchip Semiconductor Corp., ProMOS Technologies, Inc., Ramaxel Technology Ltd., SMART Modular Technologies, Inc., TwinMOS Technologies Inc., TwinMOS Technologies USA (Marshall, December 7). Some people consider Tessera to be a research institution. Some people consider it to be a patent troll. It's hard to decide, but if you sue 18 companies in one lawsuit in Marshall, Texas, you inch towards that troll line.

145) Coronary Stent Visualization Corp. v. Philips Electronics North America Corp. (Marshall, December 17). Acacia, as I described here.

146) Trover Group, Inc. v. Regions Bank (Marshall, December 18). According to this article, Trover Group was previously known as Dozier Financial Corp. Indeed, Trover is run by Charles Dozier, one of the inventors of the patents-in-suit. This appears to be an inventor's shell.

147) Beneficial Innovations v. AOL, Google, IGN Entertainment, Morris Communications Co., Dallas Morning News, Tribune Interactive, Yahoo! and YouTube (Marshall, December 20). I discussed Beneficial Innovations and inventor Sheldon F. Goldberg last week.

148) Parallel Networks, LLC v. Netflix, ATA Airlines, E*Trade, John Wiley & Sons, SkyMall, and The Finish Line (Marshall, December 28). The funny thing about this case, is that it asserts U.S. Patents 5,894,554 and 6,415,335 -- the same two patents asserted by epicRealm in its prior litigations. Same attorneys, same principals seem to be involved. Perhaps Parallel Networks is just a new name for epicRealm.

149) Media Technologies Licensing, LLC v. Tristar Productions, Ace Authentic, Bench Warmer Int'l, Press Pass, Razor Entertainment Group, Razor Entertainment LLC, SA-GE Collectibles, and Stellar Collectibles (Marshall, December 28). Media Technologies Licensing is a California LLC (in Beverly Hills) formed by the inventor of the patents-in-suit, Adrian Gluck. Those patents are 5,803,501 and 6,142,532. The patents are titled "Memorabilia Card" and had been previously asserted against The Upper Deck Co. in the Central District of California. In fact, Media Technologies Licensing filed another case just last week in CDCA. So it's strange seeing them in Texas, but there they are.

150) American Microsystems Ltd. v. WIAV Solutions, LLC (DJ) (Sherman, December 28). For more on this new case involving new troll WIAV, see here.

151) Mondis Technology Ltd. v. LG Electronics, LG Electronics USA, Hon Hai Precision, and Innolux (Marshall, December 31). And you can go to that same post for information on Mondis, too.

TT

Full post as published by Patent Troll Tracker on January 11, 2008 (boomark / email).