Joseph Miller has a new article (pdf) discussing incentives in patent infringement litigation.

A patent challenger who succeeds in defeating a patent wins spoils that it must share with the world, including all its competitors. This forced sharing undercuts an alleged infringer’s incentive to stay in the fight to the finish – especially if the patent owner offers an attractive settlement. Too many settlements, and too few definitive patent challenges, are the result.

Miller suggests that a litigation bounty delivered to the defendant could offset for the free-riding problem. In a further paper, Miller plans to expand his proposal to include a “patent attack bloc” that could allow defendants to better pool resources and rewards.

The Northern District of Illinois has implemented a “recent opinion search page.” Searches can be done according to judge, filing date, nature of suit, etc. Thus, it is easy to find recent patent opinions. The N.D. Ill. webmaster does not know of any other district court that has implemented a similar tool. The text of the opinions are delivered in pdf format are not yet searchable. Lawyers Weekly provides links to sites providing opinions from the other district courts.

Dechart LLP has released its Annual Report on Trends in Trademarks for 2003. The report finds a slight increase in trademark filing — indicating a moderate economic recovery.

The article was also covered in the New York Times (entitled “Patents as Economic Indicators”).

Although Dechart uses trademark data, others have contemplated the use of patent data as an economic indicator or a proxy for innovative activity.
Sources:
1. Crouch, D.D. and Crouch, H.L. (2003), “Environmentally Conscious Patent Histories,” Proceedings of Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing III, SPIE Proceedings 5262, 165-73.
2. Porter, M.E. and van der Linde, C. (1995), “Green and Competitive: Ending the Stalemate,” Harvard Business Review, September-October, 120-135.
3. Jaffe, A.B. and Palmer, K. (1997), “Environmental Regulation and Innovation: A Panel Data Study,” Review of Economics and Statistics, 79(4), 610-619.
4. Griliches, Z. (1990), “Patent Statistics as Economic Indicators: A Survey,” Journal of Economic Literature 28, 1661-1707.
5. Kortum, Samuel (1993), “Equilibrium R&D and the Patent-R&D Ratio: U.S. Evidence,” American Economic Review, 83(2), 450-457.

Lawrence Solum’s Blog directed me to Petra Moser’s presentation of How Do Patent Laws Influence Innovation? Evidence from the Nineteenth-Century World Fairs.

Japanese firm Fujitsu has sued Samsung in a US federal court, accusing the South Korean group of infringing its plasma display panel (PDP) patents. BBC has the story.

Fujitsu apparently holds approximately 800 patents on various features of PDP technology.

The Federal Judicial Center has recently revised the Manual for Complex Litigation. “This edition updates the treatment of electronic discovery and other aspects of pretrial management and describes major changes affecting case management in the substantive and procedural law in mass torts, class actions, intellectual property, employment discrimination, and other types of litigation. A new chapter deals with managing scientific evidence.”