Patent Litigation Continues to Rise… the Stats for 2007

IPLaw360 has reported that patent litigation increased by 6% in 2007, despite overall intellectual property litigation decreasing 8% in 2007.

There were 2942 patent infringement cases filed in 2007 (up 6% from 2006, 9% from 2005, and 2% from 2004)! While it would be easy to say that the only segment of the population that benefits from this litigation are attorneys; that would simply be incorrect. I have observed that most intellectual property naysayers have never contributed anything innovative to society. Everyone should ask themselves… “why is the United States the most innovative country in the world?” Few experts would disagree that one of the key reasons is that innovation can be protected in the US (which includes enforcement).

Hooray for the U.S.A… but how am I going to buy those ProV1’s if the price goes any higher due to patent litigation (post 1, post 2)?

Interestingly, trademark litigation dropped 7% from 2006 with a mere 3415 cases filed in 2007; and copyright litigation was down 17% from 2006 with only 3967 cases filed in 2007.

Will the trend continue? My prediction… yes, at least for 5 more years.
 
David Dawsey  – The Golf Litigation Lawyer

PS – click here to read about prior statistics, and click here to check out the largest IP verdicts of 2006