The calm after the US patent litigation storm

Patent cases filed in US district courts
	2013	2014	2015
January	486	330	445
February	547	448	491
March	404	500	507
April	605	680	390
May	503	387	608
June	485	414	654
July	476	419	478
August	521	395	309
September	552	320	327
October	515	340	443
November	578	334	845
December	422	439	131*
Total for year	6,094	5,006	5,628*
*as of December 15 2015
Source: Docket Navigator

In the first 15 days of December only 131 US patent cases were filed in US district courts. This compares with the whopping 260 cases filed on November 30 alone, and the 846 cases filed in the whole of November.

The slow December figures at the halfway stage of the month put the month on course for about 260 cases. This compares with the average monthly filing figure of 417 cases in 2014 and 508 in 2013. This year up to the end of November was running at 458 cases a month.

As of yesterday, 5628 district court cases had been filed so far in 2015, which means the year is already ahead of 2014’s 5006 cases filed. Last year started off at a brisk pace but fell away in the second half after the Supreme Court’s Alice v CLS decision came out in June.

The year will end behind the record 2013 year, however, when 6,094 patent cases were filed.

The rush of cases filed in November was the result of companies looking to file ahead of amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that became effective on December 1. This is, of course, also the reason that filing in December has been slow, with many companies likely taking the view that any complaints planned for December should be fast-tracked to beat the new rules being implemented.

The amendments included removing the ability to file a bare-bones complaint consisting of merely the patent tile, patent number and an allegation of infringement. They also introduced the concept of proportionality into discovery. 

As I noted in my analysis of the long-term effects of the new rules (available to subscribers and triallists to Managing IP), it is unclear what exactly will need to be alleged in complaints now. Saranya Raghavan of Banner & Witcoff recently notedthat “it is unclear whether it is sufficient for plaintiffs to identify at least one claim that is infringed, whether plaintiffs must identify exactly which claims are infringed, or whether plaintiffs need to provide an element-by-element infringement analysis short of claim charts provided as part of infringement contentions".

Another uncertainty is whether the new rules could be applied retroactively to require plaintiffs filing complainTS before December 1 to amend them to include more detail.

In the first few days of the amendments being in force, it seems some filers were not up to speed:

While others believe the amendments have not led to a great change in the detail in petitions: