By Brian R. Fitzgerald. This article originally appeared on Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2014.
The patent war of attrition between Apple and Samsung may come across like the singular struggle over tech innovation, but court fights about intellectual property are a regular part of life in the tech industry.
Apple was sued 59 times in the U.S. for patent infringement in 2013, the most of any company, according to data from Lex Machina that was charted by Statista. Amazon.com was No. 2, facing 50 suits last year. The data exclude declaratory judgments, which are decisions sought by those looking for court direction in the earlier stages of litigation.
Plaintiffs filed 6,092 patent cases in U.S. courts in 2013, more than doubling over the past five years, Lex Machina said. Trials were held in 128 of the cases. The top 10 of companies facing new U.S. suits is a who’s who of the global tech community, with Google, Dell, Samsung, Microsoft in the list.
Who’s filing all these cases? As you might have guessed, the top 10 filers of new patent suits are “patent monetization entities” — less affectionately known as patent “trolls.” That said, there are several well-known companies among the top 10 plaintiffs asserting patents in open cases, with Apple, Motorola Mobility, Ericsson and Pfizer among them.