After reaching record highs earlier in the year, patent case filings over the last few months have trailed off significantly, contradicting a commonly held perception that patent litigation is on the rise.
The legal analytics company Lex Machina said Wednesday that plaintiffs filed 329 new federal patent cases in September 2014, a 40 percent decrease from the 549 cases filed in September 2013. Although there’s typically an uptick in filings following the summer months, the number of filings so far this year has failed to show any sign of rising substantially.
