AUSTIN - A total of 3,111 patent lawsuits were filed in the nation last year, continuing the steady decline of cases brought since 2021, according to Lex Machina’s annual Patent Litigation Report.
In that three year time span, the Western District of Texas (WD) was the most active district with 22 percent of all patent cases filed, though the number of patent cases filed in 2023 dropped significantly compared to the previous two years, the report found.
Judge Alan Albright, a former patent attorney who presides over the WD’s Waco Division, was assigned to the highest number of patent cases from 2021 to 2023 with 1,844 cases, though his assigned patent cases in 2023 also dropped significantly compared to the previous two years.
In 2021, the WD saw 984 patent cases, which dropped to 879 in 2022 and then dropped again in 2023 to 519 cases, according to the report.
“We… see that the Western District of Texas in general, and Judge Albright in particular, both fell from the top of the case filing tables in 2023,” said Elaine Chow, Lex Machina's patent legal data expert and editor of the report. “These data-backed trends can be linked to external circumstances in the legal profession, such as judicial orders.”
In July 2022, then Chief U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia signed an order randomly assigning patent cases filed in the Waco Division “in an effort to equitably distribute those cases.”
“Our data illuminates several intriguing recent trends in patent litigation,” said Chow. “In this report, we see a continuation of the recent decrease in general patent case filings, which is likely caused, at least in part, by the drop in cases filed by high-volume plaintiffs.”
The report found that once high-volume plaintiffs (HVPs) cases were excluded, the number of patent cases filed in 2023 was no longer the lowest.
“The fact that excluding HVP cases resulted in a more even case filing trend over the ten-year period suggests that the overall decrease in patent cases filed over the past ten years was driven, at least in part, by a decrease in HVP cases,” the report states. “In fact, the number of HVP cases filed in 2023 dropped 45% compared to the previous year.”
The report states that the recent decrease in HVP cases may have been affected, at least in part, by two factors: the dip in cases filed in the WD; and an order in the District of Delaware requiring third-party funding disclosures.
Despite the decline in cases the past three years, $6 billion in total damages were awarded as Reasonable Royalty across 129 cases in that time frame, the report found.
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