Just two years ago, the International Trade Commission (ITC) was ground zero for high-stakes patent fights—a place where some of the world's biggest smartphone and electronics companies met to duke it out. But since fiscal year 2011, the agency's intellectual property caseload has been on a downward spiral, with the number of cases filed since the fiscal year began on October 1 tracking at around half the level of what it was before, when a record 70 patent suits were filed.
It's not just the number of cases that's changed, it's also who's bringing them and why. An analysis of the ITC's docket shows that Fortune Global 500 companies have filed just four cases there in the first part of this year, compared with 22 during fiscal 2011 and another 22 in 2010. And some of the products at issue—toy robots, bark-control collars for dogs, and windshield wipers—are decidedly more mundane than the bet-the-company items in earlier disputes.
