Is The 'Explosion' Of IP Litigation Cases A Mirage?

One of the stories we provide to you this week entitled Piracy Lawsuits Dominated by Just Three Movie Companies discusses an interesting article based upon a broad-based study of the more than 190,000 individual copyright, patent and trademark cases filed in United States District Courts from 1994 to 2014. The cited article, entitled IP LITIGATION IN UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURTS: 1994 TO 2014,   was published by Matthew Sag, Professor of Law at Loyola University of Chicago. (Click HERE). Unlike most empirical studies of litigation that focus on cases in which a written opinion was generated, this study recognizes that most civil cases settle or are otherwise terminated without a written opinion. As stated by the author, " if we truly want to understand IP litigation we need to examine the proverbial 'haystack' of infringement actions that are actually filed, in addition to the proverbial 'needles' of well-reasoned appellate or even district court opinions." The data