Is patent litigation out of control? Has patent litigation ever been out of control? The answers to these questions largely depend upon your point of view, and as with most complex topics, the truth is nuanced. What is not nuanced are the numbers reported in the annual reports from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, which shows that the number of patent cases that reach trial are extremely few. In fact, the number of cases that make it to the final pre-trial conference represents a small subset of the number of cases that are filed. I initially started this research in 1997, while working on my Master’s thesis, which dealt with patent litigation and the use of alternative dispute resolution. The real growth in patent litigation over the last 40 years has taken place before trial. Between 1980 and 2020, the number of patent cases reaching trial ranged between a low of 63 (in the COVID-19 affect FY 2020) but was otherwise at a low o 64 (in FY 2019) and a high of 164 (in FY 2016). All are a remarkably low number of cases that proceed to trial given the number of patent lawsuits commenced.
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