Blog 18: 2013 NPE Litigation Report

During my research I came across the “2013 NPE Litigation Report” created by RPX Corporation. Basically the RPX’s 2013 NPE Litigation Report provides a comprehensive overview of the litigation activities of non-practicing entities (NPEs). This report continues RPX’s efforts to bring transparency to the industry.

According to the report the following are considered NPEs:

1.     Patent assertion entities (PAEs): entities believed to earn revenue predominantly through asserting patents

2.     Universities and research institutions

3.     Individual inventors

4.     Non-competing entities (NCEs): operating companies asserting patents outside their areas of products or services

A lot of interesting facts were presented in the report such as:

1.     NPEs sued over 2,600 different companies in 2013 and filed 3,608 patent infringement cases. These cases resulted in 4,843 total defendants, which was 13% more than 2012.

2.     NPEs filed more than half (63%) of new patent litigation (measured by total defendants). This is the fourth straight year that NPEs were responsible for the majority of all new patent litigation. See Chart 8.

3.     NPEs filed 345 new campaigns in 2013, down slightly from 2011 and 2012, but still up substantially from 2009. New campaigns initiated in 2013 averaged 12 defendants. Total campaign defendants and unique campaign defendants were both lower than their case counterparts, reflecting that defendants are often sued multiple times on the same or related patents.

4.     At the end of 2013, there were fewer active NPE defendants than at the end of 2012. The 2013 decrease interrupts a long-term trend of annual increases and is wholly based on increased terminations (as opposed to a decrease in defendants added). Nonetheless, active NPE defendants was still up 56% from year-end 2009 to year-end 2013

5.     Litigation activity in 2013 does not appear to have been affected by the one-time temporal effects of the AIA. The AIA appears to have caused a one-time increase in activity immediately before enactment in September 2011 followed by artificially depressed levels of activity in early 2012.

Take a look at the full report here: https://www.rpxcorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/RPX-2013-NPE-Litigation-Report.pdf