Information Technology Reference
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Samsung, Motorola, and the like. There are a lot of ongoing patent suits, and the
impression is that many companies are using patents as business weapons to attack
competitors.
Patent Litigation in Recent Years
It would be interesting to look at the statistics of patent litigation
filed each year for the past 15 years. Apparently, the numbers of
patent cases are accelerating. In 2011, President Obama signed the
Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA), which introduced major
changes into U.S. patent law. The gist of the new legislation is that
the patent filing date seems to take precedence over the actual in-
vention date.
The full impact of the law has many legal issues and should be
discussed with qualified patent attorneys. The impacts are beyond
the scope of this topic. A new method of calculating patent awards
called the Nash Bargaining Solution (also outside the scope of this
book) has also begun to appear. The bottom line is that 2012 was a
record year for U.S. patent litigation, either due to the new law or
to some extrinsic reasons that are hard to quantify.
Looking at trends since 1991, the number of patent lawsuits
filed seems to follow more or less the trends of patents granted each
year, and both are increasing. Patent sales are also increasing, espe-
cially in the telecommunications sectors as various phone compan-
ies jockey for position, sue one another, and buy up patent portfo-
lios from older telecommunications companies. Buying and selling
patents is not specifically related to software and computers, but
both are part of larger patent trends that include more litigation and
very active patent acquisition.
In any case, the business model developed by Intellectual Ven-
tures of buying and creating patents seems to be bringing in a lot of
money, so it can be viewed as successful. Business schools should
develop new case studies of the impact of patent infringement cases
on technical progress and also of the impacts of the recent changes
in patent laws and award calculations.
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