The claim that there is a “patent litigation explosion” is a myth, but there’s a related patent litigation myth that has proven cantankerously resilient in the patent policy debates — there’s an “explosion” of patent-owners racing to the International Trade Commission (ITC) who are obtaining exclusion orders against infringers.

Well, this argument has crashed and burned against the hard facts of the actual numbers, but even before patent filings at the ITC dropped, this argument was still problematic.

The reason is that it was an example of a great game that we all learn in college: fun with statistics!  It’s the old rhetorical saw: If actual numbers don’t make something look bad, then just reframe the point as an out-of-context statistical claim and now it sounds like a complete disaster that demands immediate action by everyone—by Congress, by courts, and, given that the season is almost upon us, by Santa Claus (who should punish these allegedly rent-seeking patent-owners with coal in their stockings).

You may think I jest, but it’s common fare for commentators and academics to paint the situation in the ITC entirely in terms of statistical increases by patent-owners.  To take but one representative example from a 2009 academic article:

The ITC has become a popular forum for enforcing patents, with the number of actions increasing by nearly 80% since 2003.

An 80% increase in patent filings in six years!  This is clearly a litigation hurricane of historic proportions!  We must do something about this before the ITC is flooded like New York City was by Hurricane Sandy!

Yet, when one looks behind the statistics at the actual numbers, it’s almost laughable that numerous law journal articles, newspaper articles, and blog postings are breathlessly reporting on this as if this is a pressing policy problem in both the patent system and the ITC.  Congress even spent more taxpayer dollars holding hearings this past summer on this allegedly pressing problem, and what a waste of time this was.

Here’s the actual numbers behind the statistics: From 2003 to 2009 (fiscal year), patent filings in the ITC increased from 19 to 29.  In the ten years from 2001 to 2011, patent case filings in the ITC went from 29 to 70.  (Note the drop between 2001 and 2003, a drop that has occurred again and to which we will return shortly.)

So, commentators and academics want Congress to change the law to make it harder for patent-owners to seek relief at the ITC because patent filings increased in ten years from 29 cases to 70 cases.  Alas, 70 total cases doesn’t sound too bad, especially when hundreds of thousands of lawsuits and other regulatory cases are filed annually.  So, the easy answer to this problem is to reframe rhetorically the total cases: the shift from 29 to 70 cases is an increase of 141%!  In ten years!  Yep, fun with statistics.

But even if one thinks for some strange reason that 70 cases is a huge number of filings at the ITC, this is still an out-of-context assertion that doesn’t mean anything.  As empirical economists and statisticians always ask: What’s the baseline?

One good baseline is to compare ITC filings to patent infringement cases filed in plain-old-vanilla federal court. How many patent infringement cases are filed each year in federal court?  In 2010, the total number of patent infringement lawsuits was 3,605 cases.  Yes, you read that number right: 3,605 cases.  (That’s the last year for which we have numbers.)  And before readers jump to the conclusion that 3,605 cases is an unmitigated patent litigation explosion, this would be incorrect as well — as I explained in a previous blog posting, patent litigation rates today are approximately the same or less than the patent litigation rates from 1790 to 1860.

In sum, we’re supposed to be filled with shock and awe by the 70 patent cases that were filed in the ITC in 2011, as compared to the 3,605 cases filed in federal court.  These 70 patents cases at the ITC, we’re told, demand immediate congressional action to impose a regime change on the ITC in limiting its jurisdiction over patents.  To put it bluntly, people are getting their patent policy knickers in a twist because 1.94% of total patent infringement cases are also being filed in the ITC.  Yep, fun with statistics.

And as Billy Mays would say: But wait, there’s more!  (That OxiClean was definitely worth it.  My sneakers were never so clean.)

Lest one still thinks that the number of patent filings in the ITC is a problem, the ITC released last month its fiscal-year 2012 report on patent filings — a report that got about as much attention as a report on dryer lint accumulations in fiscal-year 2012.  Given the ongoing uproar over patent filings in the ITC, one would expect that the ITC’s report would be have been trumpeted in news articles, blog postings, and by the commentators and academics who have been singing this tune for the past several years.

Nope, not a single peep about this report has been made in the more-than-30 days since its release.  Why the silence — the deafening silence — about the most recent data from the ITC on patent filings?

The reason is simple: the facts in the latest ITC fiscal-year report don’t fit the policy narrative.  The ITC reported that patent cases filed in the ITC dropped from a high of 70 cases in 2011 to a total of 48 cases in 2012 (fiscal year).  In the statistical terms loved so much by the critics of patent filings at the ITC, patent filings dropped by 31.4% between 2011 and 2012 (fiscal years).  Now that’s an interesting statistical number about which much could be said — or, as is the case, not said and ignored in the hope that it’ll just go away.

So, what happened to the loud, incessant complaints about skyrocketing patent filings in the ITC?  Well, to paraphrase the old man at the end of every Scooby Doo episode: And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for you meddling facts!

UPDATE: I made some minor copy-edit changes to the text after I posted it.

Filed under: intellectual property, international trade, litigation, patent

It’s an appropriate question, both figuratively and literally. Today’s news headlines are now warning of a looming pilot shortage. A combination of new qualification standards for new pilots and a large percentage of pilots reaching the mandatory retirement age of 65 is creating the prospect of having too few pilots for the US airline industry.

But it still begs the question of “Why?” According to the WSJ article linked above, the new regulations require newly hired pilots to have at least 1,500 hours of prior flight experience. What’s striking about that number is that it is six times the current requirement, significantly increasing the cost (and time) of training to be a pilot.

Why such a huge increase in training requirements? I don’t fly as often as some of my colleagues, but do fly often enough to be concerned that the person in the front of the plane knows what they’re doing. I appreciate the public safety concerns that must have been at the forefront of the regulatory debate. But the facts don’t support an argument that public safety is endangered by the current level of experience pilots are required to attain. Quite the contrary, the past decade has been among the safest ever for airline passengers. In fact, the WSJ reports that:

Congress’s 2010 vote to require 1,500 hours of experience in August 2013 came in the wake of several regional-airline accidents, although none had been due to pilots having fewer than 1,500 hours.

Indeed, to the extent human error has been involved in airline accidents and near misses over the past decade, federally employed air traffic controllers, not privately employed pilots, have been more to blame.

The coincidence of such a staggering increase in training requirements for new pilots and the impending mandatory retirement of a large percentage of current pilots suggests that perhaps other forces were at work behind the scenes when Congress passed the rules in 2010. Legislative proposals are often written by special interests just waiting in the wings (no pun intended) for an opportune moment. Given the downsizing and cost-reduction focus of the US airline industry over the past many years, no group has been more disadvantaged and no group stands more to gain from the new rules than current pilots and the pilots unions.

And so the question, as we face this looming shortage of newly qualified pilots: Who’s flying the plane?

 

Filed under: barriers to entry, consumer protection, markets, political economy, regulation, Sykuta

A nice way to take a break from Election Day stress about this fingernail-biting-close election is to listen to some panelists talk about something that is truly important — software patents!

It a great panel, notwithstanding my participation, and it promises to be a lot of fun and informative.  So, call in for the teleforum and even ask a question or two of us while you’re at it.  Here’s the information:

Boon or Bane for Technological Innovation?: Software Patents

Intellectual Property Practice Group Teleforum

Although pure software patents are only a couple decades old, they have become the focus of a heated innovation policy debate. On the one hand, new technological innovation once imagined only as science fiction is now a commonplace feature of our lives—tablet computers, smart phones, wireless telecommunication, cloud computing, and streaming television, movies and songs, to name just a few of our modern marvels.  On the other hand, the high-tech industry seems awash in patent litigation, especially in the “smart phone war” between Apple, Samsung, Google, Microsoft, and other high-tech firms.  As a result of this extensive litigation, commentators in newspaper articles, in blogs, and at conferences now complain about the “problem of software patents.” Conventional wisdom seems to be quickly gelling around the proposition that software patents are a problem that demands a solution from Congress or the courts. This Teleforum panel will consider whether software patents advance development of new technological innovation or hinder this vital innovation. The panelists represent all viewpoints on this topic, and they bring their extensive academic, legal and industry experiences to bear on this increasingly important issue in the innovation policy debates today.

Featuring:

• Mr. Robert R. Sachs, Partner, Fenwick & West LLP
• Prof. Adam Mossoff, George Mason University School of Law
• Prof. David Olson, Boston College Law School
• Moderator: Prof. Mark Schultz, Southern Illinois University School of Law

Agenda:

Call begins at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

Registration details:

Teleforum calls are open to all dues paying members of the Federalist Society. To become a member, sign up here. As a member, you should receive email announcements of upcoming Teleforum calls which contain the conference call phone number. If you are not receiving those email announcements, please contact us at 202-822-8138.

Filed under: truth on the market

About a week ago, I was lucky to moderate the digital equivalent of a “fireside chat” with Richard Epstein about the patent system.  The topic was “Patent Rights: A Spark or Hindrance for the Economy?,” and Richard offered his usual brilliant analysis of the systemic viritues of securing patents as property rights.  you can listen to the podcast here.

The podcast is also available via iTunes, for readers of this blog who are members of the “cult of Apple.”

Here’s the description of the podcast:

Innovation and entrepreneurship are integral to America’s economic strength, and the U.S. patent system has been critical to nurturing the innovation economy.  With its foundation in Article One, Section 8 of the Constitution, the U.S. patent system has been the strongest in the world.  In recent years, some critics, including Judge Richard Posner, have argued that the patent system has led to excessive patenting, too much litigation, and unwarranted costs for consumers.  Patent defenders have responded that with every spike in innovation comes a corresponding increase in the number of patent suits, and efforts to weaken patent rights will inevitably lead to less innovation.  With the passage of the America Invents Act — the broadest overhaul of the patent system in 50 years America — many people believed that the dispute over patent rights would recede.  However, with a string of high profile patent infringement suits in the smartphone industry – and a new effort to roll back patent rights at the International Trade Commission certain patents held by so-called “non-practicing entities” (NPEs) – the debate over intellectual property has grown more intense.  Would reduced patent rights diminish U.S. competitiveness and depress innovation?  In a diversified economy, should NPEs have fewer patent rights than those that manufacture their inventions?   Will innovation continue apace even if patent protections are scaled back?

 

Filed under: intellectual property, patent

My colleague, Eric Claeys, has posted to SSRN an interesting and important review of Robert Merges’s new book, Justifying Intellectual Property (Harvard University Press, 2012).  Here’s the abstract…

Read the full piece here. 

We often hear today that there’s an unprecedented “patent litigation explosion” that’s killing innovation. Last week, the New York Times plied this claim without abandon in its hit piece on high-tech patents.  It’s become so commonplace that this phrase garners over 1.3 million hits on Google. It’s especially common fare in discussions about the “smart phone war.”  It was raised repeatedly by my fellow panelists, for instance, at a congressional briefing a few days ago (you can listen to the audio of the event here).

Of course, a blog posting is not a law review article and so I can’t get into all of the weeds here, but a blog is ideal for a few quick reactions to this tread-worn trope in the public policy debates about patents.

First, it’s simply untrue. Award-winning economist, Zorina Khan, reports in her book, The Democratization of Invention, that patent litigation rates from 1790 to 1860 fluctuated a lot, but averaged 1.65%. Today’s patent litigation rates are around 1.5%.  As Yoda would say: patent litigation explosion this is not, hmm, no.  In fact, for three decades in Khan’s study patent litigation rates were higher than today’s litigation rate. From 1840-1849, for instance, patent litigation rates were 3.6% — more than twice the patent litigation rate today.

This was during a time, as reported by patent law professor Michael Risch, when patents were handwritten, and even worse, patents were extremely vague, incoherent and sometimes outright unintelligible.  And, as Professor Risch and others have so ably reported, patent law was very much unsettled at this time as well given the many new ways that the American patent system departed from English patent law. 

And it wasn’t just that the law was new and that patents were vague, as early scientific and technological discoveries were just as difficult to comprehend as the new scientific and technological discoveries are today. Long before Judge Richard Posner was complaining of the lack of technical competence at the PTO or Judge Learned Hand was complaining about his own ignorance of biochemistry in assessing the validity of early pharma patents, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story was explaining in 1841 that

Patents and copyrights approach nearer than any other class of cases belonging to forensic discussions, to what may be called the metaphysics of law, where the distinctions are, or at least may be very subtle and refined, and sometimes, almost evanescent.

Frankly, with all of the rampant uncertainty in early patent law and in early developments in science and technology — early nineteenth-century scientists, for instance, were still vigorously debating whether the atomic theory of matter was valid — it’s surprising that the patent litigations rates weren’t astronomically higher than just 1.65%, or with many similar problems today that our patent litigations rates are only 1.5%.

The historical patent litigation rates are significant because they also include the same “patent wars” that we are experiencing with the “smart phone war.” The very first patent war began in 1851, and was called at the time in the popular press the “Sewing Machine War.”  The Sewing Machine War had all of the allegedly new problems about which there is much breathless commentary on the “smart phone war” today: lawsuits in multiple venues, expensive litigation, numerous overlapping patents, non-practicing (patent-licensing) entities obtaining injunctions against manufacturers, “defensive patenting,” inventors’ sales of patents to firms, etc., etc. There was even widespread popular outcry over the Sewing Machine War, as it was fought as much in the newspapers as it was in the courts. As the classic saying goes: What’s old is new again.

Importantly, the Sewing Machine War was ultimately resolved by patent-owners innovatively creating the very first patent pool in American history, called the Sewing Machine Combination, which functioned successfully until its last patent expired in the 1870s. The Sewing Machine Combination unleashed a tremendous amount of commercial, technological and even social innovation — including new innovative manufacturing techniques, innovative commercial practices, and even helping change social prejudices about women’s ability to use machines.  As a result, the sewing machine was fundamental to the success of the Industrial Revolution in the U.S., as I have detailed extensively in my historical research.

But even after the Sewing Machine War was brought to an end in 1856 by the Sewing Machine Combination, so-called “patent wars” continued to occur with every pioneering leap forward in technological innovation — the incandescent light bulb, telephone, electrical systems, automobile, airplane, and radio were all subjects of patent wars. Today’s patent lawyers remember very well the “diaper wars” and the “stent wars” of the 1980s, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in patent damages awards. If cutting-edge innovation in disposable diapers (a multi-billion-dollar industry, as any parent knows) is the subject of intense patenting and extensive litigation, then frankly we should be unsurprised that this occurs again with 21st-century cutting-edge innovation in smart phones, tablet computers and other digital devices.

Unfortunately, the complaints today about today’s patent litigation crisis arise more from unchecked intuitions about what feels like a bad situation, from unrealistic assumptions about how much certainty we can achieve in the patent system, and from emotionally-compelling anecdotes about innovators running into trouble with patents — like the ones that dominated the New York Times hit piece on high-tech patents a week ago.

As I said in a previous blog posting, it’s time to bring objectivity and a historical-based perspective to public policy discussions about patent litigation, the smart phone wars, and the role of property rights in innovation.

Filed under: intellectual property, litigation, patent, technology, war

I’m moderating the digital equivalent of a “fireside chat” with Richard Epstein at 3pm this afternoon.  The great thing about teleforums is that, unlike podcasts, listeners can ask questions of the speaker.  So, call in and let’s have fun!   Here’s the information…

Read the full piece here. 

Some of the most significant transactions singled out recently for intensive federal review involve the communications industry. Unfortunately, communications providers face serious and potentially fatal problems of supply. Radio spectrum — the chief input and most severe constraint on the ability of carriers to support more users and more data — is essentially unavailable at any price. That’s because the Federal Communications Commission has run out of usable, unassigned spectrum to license. As consumers pull orders of magnitude more data to their smartphones, tablets, and notebook computers, carriers are becoming desperate. Network operators, already experiencing what the FCC warned in 2010 as an imminent “spectrum crunch,” have little choice but to acquire spectrum assets from other mobile operators, whose licenses can be put to immediate use once the agency approves the transfer. They have been doing so as quickly as possible, attempting or completing over a dozen major transactions since 2007. But as the urgency of spectrum-related transactions has increased, the FCC has come to play an increasingly problematic — and largely unstructured — role in the government’s review of transactions in the communications industry. This brief essay discusses the key problems with the FCC’s current approach to transactions involving spectrum license transfers.

UPDATE: You can listen to an MP3 of the panel briefing at

http://www.netcaucus.org/audio/2012/20121016mobilepatents.mp3

Today, I’m participating in a Hill briefing on the smart phone wars hosted by the Advisor Committee for the Congressional Internet Caucus.  Here’s the information:

Date: Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Time: 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm. Program begins promptly at 12:00 pm, check-in starts at 11:30 am. (Box lunch will be served)
Location: Rayburn House Office Building – Room 2226
RSVP: [email protected] or via phone to 202-638-4370. Note: Registration is complimentary.

Panelists

• Marvin Ammori – Principal, Ammori Group and Steering Committee, Engine Advocacy [Bio]
• Jorge Contreras – Associate Professor of Law – Washington College of Law, American University [Bio]
• Eric Hinkes – Legal Policy Fellow, Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee [Bio] (Moderator)
• Adam Mossoff – Professor of Law – George Mason University School of Law [Bio]
• Rob Pegoraro – USA Today/Discovery News [Bio]

Additional Panelists Will Be Announced

You have seen the headlines: Patent litigation continues to roil the exploding smartphone and tablet marketplace with consumers literally caught in the crossfire. Recent high profile smartphone court cases have consumers and policymakers deeply troubled that courts will strangle the incredible pace of mobile innovation and competition. Recent litigation between leading smartphone manufacturers has also caught the attention of Congressional members. The number of smartphone patent lawsuits in multiple countries and jurisdictions around the globe is dizzying and could threaten to keep the best new mobile phones off the market. How will the public be affected by these lawsuits as new mobile devices continue to rollout? Will a competitor force your favorite mobile device off the market?

A diverse set of panelists will tackle important questions including: 1) Can mobile device companies simply innovate around these intellectual property disputes?; 2) Are these constant lawsuits just the natural byproduct of rapid innovation?; 3) Must Congress step in with legislation? The panel will also debate the impact of the recently passed America Invents Act on the smartphone litigation inferno and share their thoughts on what patent issues lie on the horizon in the competitive mobile device space.

Filed under: truth on the market