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The Companies Most Pursued by NPEs

By Peter Zura

PatentFreedom has identified and profiled over 315 distinct NPEs and claims that, since 1985, these NPEs have been involved in litigation with nearly 4,500 different operating companies in over 3,100 distinct actions. Furthermore, nearly 75% of the suits between these NPEs and operating companies were filed since 2003.

PatentFreedom has tabulated the lawsuits between 2004-09 to determine the "most pursued" companies by NPEs:

(1)  Apple - 56 NPE Lawsuits
(2)  Sony - 55 NPE Lawsuits
(3)  Dell - 50 NPE Lawsuits
(4)  Microsoft - 49 NPE Lawsuits
(5)  HP - 48 NPE Lawsuits
(6)  Samsung - 48 NPE Lawsuits
(7)  Motorola - 46 NPE Lawsuits
(8)  AT&T - 44 NPE Lawsuits
(9)  Nokia - 42 NPE Lawsuits
(10)  Panasonic - 40 NPE Lawsuits
(11)  LG - 39 NPE Lawsuits
(12)  Verizon - 37 NPE Lawsuits
(13)  Toshiba - 36 NPE Lawsuits
(14)  Sprint Nextel - 34 NPE Lawsuits
(15)  Google - 33 NPE Lawsuits
(16)  Acer - 31 NPE Lawsuits
(17)  Time Warner - 31 NPE Lawsuits
(18)  Deutsche Telekom - 29 NPE Lawsuits
(19)  Kyocera - 28 NPE Lawsuits
(20)  Palm - 28 NPE Lawsuits
(21)  Cisco - 27 NPE Lawsuits
(22)  Fujitsu - 25 NPE Lawsuits
(23)  IBM - 25 NPE Lawsuits
(24)  Intel - 24 NPE Lawsuits
(25)  RIM - 24 NPE Lawsuits
(26)  HTC - 24 NPE Lawsuits

Interestingly, a number of these companies actually experied a decline in lawsuits compared to 2008:

Microsoft - 23% decline (10 cases in 2009, vs. 13 cases in 2008)
Samsung - 45% decline (6 cases in 2009, vs. 11 cases in 2008)
Motorola - 64% decline (9 cases in 2009, vs. 14 cases in 2008)
AT&T - 30% decline (7 cases in 2009, vs. 10 cases in 2008)
Palm - 40% decline (6 cases in 2009, vs. 10 cases in 2008)
RIM - 55% decline (5 cases in 2009, vs. 11 cases in 2008)
HTC -  40% decline (6 cases in 2009, vs. 10 cases in 2008)

According to PatentFreedom, NPE lawsuits dropped from 500 cases, to just over 450 cases in the last year.
 
Nevertheless, others companies experienced a significant increase in lawsuits over the previous year:

Apple - 62% increase (21 cases in 2009, vs. 13 cases in 2008)
Sony - 42% increase (17 cases in 2009, vs. 12 cases in 2008)
Dell - 113% increase (17 cases in 2009, vs. 8 cases in 2008)
Panasonic - 120% increase (11 cases in 2009, vs. 5 cases in 2008)
Toshiba - 60% increase (8 cases in 2009, vs. 5 cases in 2008)
IBM - 350% increase (9 cases in 2009, vs. 2 cases in 2008)

Regarding the most litigious NPE's (since 2003), Patent Freedom ranks them this way:

Acacia Technologies - 337 cases
Rates Technology Inc - 139 cases
Ronald A Katz Technology Licensing - 129 cases
Millennium LP - 110 cases
Plutus IP - 77 cases
Sorensen Research and Development Trust - 73 cases
General Patent Corp International - 72 cases
Cygnus Telecommunications Technology LLC - 69 cases
Papst Licensing GmbH - 62 cases
F&G Research Inc - 56 cases

To read more information on this topic, see PatentFreedom:'s website:

"Most Pursued Companies" (link)
"Litigations Over Time" (link)
"Most Litigious" NPE's (link)
"Largest Patent Holdings" (NPE) (link)
"Product Categorization" (link)

See also Joff Wild's take at the IAM blog: "Apple is the number one target for NPEs in the US" (link)

Full post as published by Two-Seventy-One Patent Blog on February 17, 2010 (boomark / email).