Patexia Insight 128: Most Active and Best Performing Patent Litigation Firms of 2022
Last month we published our 2022 Patent Litigation Report. We evaluated 14,685 attorneys and 3,050 firms that were active in at least one of the 14,506 district court patent cases filed from July 1, 2017 through June 30, 2021. We identified 2,161 firms that represented plaintiffs, and 1,964 firms that represented defendants during this time. This week we will highlight some of the most active and best performing law firms.
As shown in the above bar chart, patent litigation activity has been on the rise since it bottomed in 2019. In 2021 there were a total of 3,981 cases. The number of unique patents peaked at 4,123 in 2021.
As described later under Ranking Methodology, we evaluated all 3000+ active law firms based on their activity and performance. For each firm we calculated the activity and performance as defined by our ranking methodology (see below). We measured these for three different categories of plaintiffs, defendants and overall.
In the last couple of weeks we covered some of the most active and best performing plaintiffs and defendants (Patexia Insight 126 and Patexia Insight 127). The following table shows some of the best performing and most active law firms in patent litigation based on our 2022 Patent Litigation Intelligence Report. Being ranked among the top 100 out of a total of 3,050 firms means that the firm belongs to the top three percentile in the respective category.
| Law Firm | All Cases | Category | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fenwick & West LLP |
254 |
Overall Performance Rank |
1 |
| Perkins Coie | 283 | Defendant Activity Rank | 3 |
| Polsinelli |
129 |
Plaintiff Performance Rank |
8 |
| Greenberg Traurig LLP | 182 | Defendant Activity Rank | 10 |
| Etheridge Law Group |
241 |
Plaintiff Activity Rank |
13 |
| Morrison & Foerster | 119 | Plaintiff Performance Rank | 14 |
| Alston & Bird |
162 |
Overall Activity Rank
|
18 |
| Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton | 170 | Defendant Activity Rank | 20 |
| Erise IP P.A. |
68 |
Defendant Performance Rank
|
31 |
| Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati | 96 | Defendant Activity Rank | 39 |
| Fisch Sigler LLP |
23 |
Defendant Performance Rank |
50 |
| Goldberg Segalla LLP | 32 | Plaintiff Activity Rank | 58 |
| Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky & Popeo |
88 |
Plaintiff Activity Rank |
63 |
| Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks | 44 | Defendant Activity Rank | 74 |
The full 2022 Patent Litigation Report covers the activity and performance rankings for the top 1,000 most active law firms. The report also includes the top 3 clients for each of the law firms.
RANKING METHODOLOGY
As we learn more and talk to more IP litigators, our ranking methodology and models gets updated every year. The goal is to get to a point that the scores truely reflect the performance of all stakeholders in patent litigation and provide a powerful tool to inhouse counsel when they decide which firm and/or attorney to hire for their next case.
Since the number of patents in each case impacts the amount of work attorneys and law firms do, we have included that as part of the activity score. The activity score is a weighted average of the number of unique patents and cases each attorney has worked on. The newer cases have slightly higher points compared to older cases. For example a law firm with cases in 2021 ranks slightly higher than another firm with the exact number of cases filed in prior years.
When it comes to performance, we calculate the success rate of all stakeholders including law firms for all terminated cases in the period of the study. We rely on the status provided by PACER but for many of the cases we need to reclassify the outcome by manually reviewing the case documents in order to find out which side obtained more favorable outcome. These classifications helps us calculate the success score for each of the firms or attorneys. The following table summarizes the points we allocated to each of the parties based on the respective outcome. As you can see, we have even considered the related IPR cases as a way to better calculate the scores.
| Outcome | Plaintiff | Defendant | Plain. Atty/Firm | Def. Atty/Firm |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Judgment - Defendant Wins |
0 |
1 | 0 | 1 |
| Judgment - Plaintiff Wins | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Judgment - Plaintiff + Settlement | 0.75 | 0.25 | 0.75 | 0.25 |
| Judgment - Settlement (Confidential) | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 |
| Judgment - Dismissed, no Jurisdiction | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Judgment - Voluntarily Dismissed by Party(ies) | 0.25 | 0.75 | 0.25 | 0.75 |
| Dismissed - Voluntarily | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Dismissed - Settled (no IPR petition) | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 |
| Dismissed - Settled (IPR denied) | 0.75 | 0.25 | 0.75 | 0.25 |
| Dismissed - Settled (IPR, settled pre-Institution) | 0.25 | 0.75 | 0.25 | 0.75 |
| Dismissed - Settled (IPR, settled post-Institution, pre-trial) | 0.25 | 0.75 | 0.25 | 0.75 |
| Dismissed - Settled (IPR, < 50% claims survive) | 0.25 | 0.75 | 0.25 | 0.75 |
| Dismissed - Settled (IPR, > 50% claims survive) | 0.75 | 0.25 | 0.75 | 0.25 |
| Dismissed - Other | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
The performance score of the attorney or firm is calculated as a weighted average of activity and success. The inclusion of activity is important as there is a big difference between a firm with many cases and a firm with only a single case. Experience comes with more work and ultimately corporations would like to hire a counsel who is experienced (case volume) and over time has shown good results.
We plan to release our third ITC Intelligence Report next week. The report covers all the stakeholders including complainants and respondents and their representatives involved in ITC Section 337 investigations over the last six years. Stay tuned!