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Patent Litigation Statistics for January 2008

By Troll Tracker

At long last, here are my January 2008 patent litigation statistics. In total, PACER/ECF showed 230 patent cases filed in January 2008, compared to 210 in January 2007. This is a 10% year-to-year increase. PACER/ECF has a flaw in that it records what I have heard called ?false positives.? For example, when TiVo v. EchoStar came back from the Federal Circuit appeal, the Eastern District of Texas counted it as a new case, and it was counted as one of the February 2008 cases. I will not include it on my list. False positives were present in 2007 and they are present in 2008, so I still think there is a 10% year-to-year increase. But, in actuality, out of the 230 cases PACER/ECF counted, I think there were actually 202 new patent litigation cases filed in January 2008.

I have a tradition of tracking the top jurisdictions both by number of cases filed and by number of defendants. Here is my top 10 list for January 2008. Guess who?s number 1?

1. Eastern District of Texas: 15 new cases filed, 107 defendants sued.
(11 Marshall, 1 Texarkana, 3 Tyler)
2. Northern District of California: 15 cases, 26 defendants.
3. District of New Jersey: 11 cases, 20 defendants.
4. District of Delaware: 10 cases, 32 defendants.
5. Central District of California: 10 cases, 20 defendants.
6. Western District of Washington: 9 cases, 14 defendants.
7. Northern District of Illinois: 9 cases, 12 defendants.
8. Southern District of California: 8 cases, 12 defendants.
9. Southern District of New York: 6 cases, 16 defendants.
10. Southern District of Florida: 6 cases, 7 defendants.

So what?s new about this month?s top ten? For one, we welcome a few new districts: Western District of Washington, Southern District of California, and Southern District of Florida. What?s not new? The fact that 1 out of every 4 defendants sued nationwide was sued in the Eastern District of Texas (107 out of 444).

Other districts with double-digit number of defendants: Eastern District of Michigan (11), Western District of Wisconsin (11), and Eastern District of Virginia (10). All in all, 52 out of the 94 judicial districts in the country had at least one patent case in January.

For the top ten, here's the percentage, in each district, of total civil cases that are patent infringement cases:

1. District of Delaware: 14%
2. Eastern District of Texas: 7%
3. Western District of Washington: 4%
4. Southern District of California: 3.5%
5. Northern District of California: 2%
6. District of New Jersey: 2%
7. Central District of California: 1%
8. Northern District of Illinois: 1%
9. Southern District of New York: 1%
10. Southern District of Florida: 1%

So I think that #3-#10 above are in the "noise" range. But it's pretty amazing about the Eastern District, and especially Delaware.

I also tracked cases by ?categorization.? My categories were as follows:

Patentee is company that makes products: 149 cases, 257 defendants (1.7 defendants per case)
University/research center: 0 cases
Patentee is individual inventor: 12 cases, 14 defendants (1.2 defendants per case)
Patentee is company that makes no products: 41 cases, 173 defendants (4.2 defendants per case)
That?s interesting: ?competitor? patent cases comprised 74% of all cases in January, but 58% of all defendants sued. ?Non-competitor? patent cases were 26% of cases, and 42% of defendants sued.

I also looked at the breakdown between ?competitor/university/research? (CUR) and ?individual inventor/shell corporation/troll? (IST) cases for each of the top ten districts.

TXED: 27% CUR, 73% IST
CAND: 47% CUR, 53% IST
NJD: 91% CUR, 9% IST
DED: 90% CUR, 10% IST
CACD: 80% CUR, 20% IST
WAWD: 89% CUR, 11% IST
ILND: 56% CUR, 44% IST
CASD: 13% CUR, 87% IST
NYSD: 67% CUR, 33% IST
FLSD: 50% CUR, 50% IST

Well, this really comes as no surprise. Most of the non-practicing entities are flocking to Texas. A few in Northern California (although that?s a little bit due to declaratory judgment cases like RealNetworks v. Burst.com). In case you are surprised about the Southern District of California, see #2 below.

To conclude, here are a dozen of the more interesting non-practicing entity cases from January 2008. My intent is to pick the 12 of each past month I found most interesting. That?s completely subjective. Disclaimer: of course, the below list is not comprehensive of all such cases filed in January (I left at least 5 off this list, including cases I previously featured, like Alexsam and others), the below list is not in any particular order, and the fact that these cases are listed below does not mean I am criticizing or condoning any of these cases!

1) Power Jamb, LLC v. City of New York; New York City Fire Department; New York City Fire Academy; and 4 Fire Department leaders (New York, New York, January 17). Power Jamb is a shell for the inventor, Michael Bishop. He has asserted U.S. Patent 5,906,493, "Firefighter Training Door Device." His complaint alleges that he applied for the patnet in 1997, and the fire department bought training devices from him. His patent issued in 1999, and continued to purchase until 2006, when the NYFD copied his device for its own. So I can understand the suit, if the allegations are true. I'm just trying to picture, suing the NYFD in New York. It doesn't look like Bishop has requested a jury trial. Good move.

2) Sorensen Research & Development Trust v. 13 defendants in 9 cases (7 in San Diego, California, and 2 in San Francisco, California, January 4-23). I have yet to feature SRDT, an entity asserting the patents invented by Jens Ole Sorensen relating to plastic injection molded parts. One of the more notable defendants was Motorola. Not sure why the surge of cases, though - there have already been 3 more in February. Last gasp to get retirement money?

3) Credit Card Fraud Control Corp. v. Full Spectrum Telecommunications; National A-1 Advertising; Network Telephone Services; SPG Solutions; Teligence; UTEL Networks (Marshall, Texas, January 7). This is Acacia, with another multi-defendant lawsuit, this time in Texas. See #5 here.

4) Global Patent Holdings v. Panthers BRHC d/b/a Boca Raton Resort & Club (West Palm Beach, Florida, January 8). I want to know the back story. Ray Niro, according to published interviews with him in legal magazines, has a home in the West Palm Beach area. Was he treated badly here? Why sue the local resort? The latest volley was an amended complaint, blaming the Boca Resort for Enron and the subprime mortgage crisis. Posts on this case: 4A; 4B; 4C.

5) Minerva Industries v. RIM, Apple, Motorola, and 30 other companies (Marshall, Texas, January 22). This one struck me because of the broadness of the issued claim and the breadth of the companies sued. Every smart phone sold in the country could possibly be implicated. And of all my stories in January, this one got the most widely disseminated. Well, all of the ones I started. Read the Minerva saga here: 5A; 5B. Our Patent Office is creating global chuckles. Read about it in Italian, Polish, German, Russian, French, Japanese, Dutch, or in English on any one of a number of websites.

6) Source, Inc. v. 38 defendants (Marshall, Texas, January 23). This one got my Bloated Case Award for the most number of defendants sued in one case during the month of January.

7) Innovative Patented Technology v. ICON Health & Fitness (West Palm Beach, Florida, January 24). I thought this case was interesting because it demonstrated that there's another connection between Niro Scavone and J. Beauregard Parker other than the Scott Harris connection. Parker's company sued on a patent not invented by Harris. My post on it was here.

8) VTran Media Technologies v. 11 defendants in 4 cases (Marshall, Texas; Huntsville, Alabama; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 25-31). This one got my Most Likely To Be MDL'd Award for January.

9) SMDK Corp. v. Creative Labs, Audiovox, Coby Electronics, Creative Tech, Epson America, Seiko-Epson, Seiko Corp.; Phison Corp., TIC Computer; Thomson; and Vosonic Tech (Marshall, Texas, January 24). This one intrigued me because SmartDisk was an actual company, whose assets were sold to Mitsubishi. Everything but the patents, which remained with the owners, who decided to go into the lawsuit business. The prototypical once-company.

10) IP Innovation, LLC & Technology Licensing Corp. v. Mitsubishi Electric (Chicago, Illinois, January 17). This was J. Carl Cooper's 10th patent litigation (at least) involving the same patent. My feature on Cooper and his companies was here.

11) LivePerson, Inc. v. NextCard, LLC & Marshall Credit Strategies, LLC (Wilmington, Delaware, January 29) (D/J). Next Card and Marshall Credit Strategies are shells controlled by Edward "Rusty" Rose, a friend of President Bush. Evidently, they are running around accusing LivePerson's product of infringement, even though LivePerson isn't part of the suit filed by NextCard and MCS in Texas. This one looks like a likely candidate for transfer. For my earlier posts, see here: 11A; 11B.

12) Traffic Information LLC v. Alpine Electronics of America; Magellan Navigation; and Sanyo North American Corp. (Marshall, Texas, January 8). Another multi-defendant case for the shell of Portland patent attorneys looking to make some money. See #8 here.

Anyway, that?s what I found interesting. Hope you found this month?s statistics useful. Let me know what else you might want to see out of this.

TT

Full post as published by Patent Troll Tracker on February 08, 2008 (boomark / email).