George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School

The Nadir of “Patent Troll” Rhetoric

The venerable high-tech company IBM is no more a “patent troll” than any other legitimate company that engages in patent licensing. Yet, according to the very arguments of those who are using this ill-defined and misleading term, the shoe fits. Read more

GAO Report Confirms No “Patent Troll” Litigation Problem

As we previously reported, there are serious concerns with the studies asserting that a “patent litigation explosion” has been caused by patent licensing companies (so-called non-practicing entities (“NPEs”) or “patent trolls”). These seemingly alarming studies (see here and here) have drawn scholarly criticism for their use of proprietary, secret data collected from companies like RPX and Patent Freedom – companies whose business models are predicated on defending against patent licensing companies. Read more

The Myth of the “Patent Troll” Litigation Explosion

[Cross posted at Truth on the Market]

In a prior blog posting, I reported how reports of a so-called “patent litigation explosion” today are just wrong.  As I detailed in another blog posting, the percentage of patent lawsuits today are not only consistent with historical patent litigation rates in the nineteenth century, there is actually less litigation today than during some decades in the early nineteenth century. Read more

“Funny Math” Still Infecting Scholarship on Patent Cases in the ITC

Those claiming that we’ve seen an “explosion of patent litigation” in recent years have proven resilient to counterarguments, continuing even to generate questionable “statistics” to buttress their assertions.

Given the Obama Administration’s recent reversal of the International Trade Commission’s exclusion order against Apple in its patent dispute with Samsung, we are hearing once again that there has been an “explosion” of patents cases at the ITC. Read more