Patexia Insight 90: Best IPR Attorneys in 2020
Earlier this month we released our 2020 IPR Intelligence Report where we covered the top IPR law firms and attorneys by activity, success and performance. This 129-page report covered 7,708 IPR petitions filed in a 5-year period between July 1, 2015 and July 1, 2020. During this time, a total of 4,983 attorneys were involved in one or more IPR cases. This week, we will review some of the top attorneys ranked in this year’s report.
The full report covers up to the 1000 most active IPR attorneys over the last five years. Here, we highlight some of the IPR attorneys in alphabetical order, ranked in the top 25 by activity, success or performance. Being among the top 25 means the attorney is in fact, in the top 0.1 percent out of almost 5000 attorneys:
PO = Patent Owner, PET = Petitioner, OV = Overall, Blank = not in the top 25
A blank cell in the above table means that the attorney was not necessarily ranked in the top 25 in that particular category. Also, it is possible that the attorney has other top rankings in a particular category but we only covered the highest ranking in that category (e.g., the best activity rank between PO, PET and Overall)
Here we would like to explain a few adjustments we made to our ranking methodology this year:
- Activity Measurement (Score): We used to count the number of cases for each party or their representatives. While this was correct, it did not differentiate between recent and old filings. For example, some attorneys were very active five years ago but had almost no activity in the past four years. To take this into consideration, we implemented an Activity Score Function, which slightly discounted cases for earlier years. Under the new model, an attorney with 48 cases in 2020 is ranked higher than another attorney with 50 cases in 2015.
- New Success and Performance Scores/Rankings: In the past, we only calculated the Performance Score which was based on the outcome of the cases (i.e., settled, denied, invalidated, etc.). This year, we renamed the old Performance Score to Success Score and then introduced a new Performance Score, which is a weighted average of Activity and Success Scores. One thing that we did not consider in the past, was that large case numbers would inevitably dilute performance over time. After all, none of us can escape the law of averages! This new performance score helps companies find highly active and highly successful law firms and attorneys (i.e., the most qualified ones).
- Settled Cases: In previous years, we used to give all the points to the petitioner if a case was settled. While oftentimes settlement means the patent owner has limited options and may be chosen by patent owners to cut their losses, in some cases, it may be a part of a larger strategy related to co-pending district court cases. As a result, and to be consistent for all cases, we decided to divide the point 0.75/0.25 between the petitioner and patent owner (according to our survey results, most of the respondents still believe a settled IPR is a victory for the petitioner).
- Lowered Cut-off Numbers for Performance and Success Rankings: Although everybody received Success and Performance Scores, we had to limit the rankings to avoid comparing an attorney with a single case to another attorney with more than 100 cases. This year, we required a minimum of 30 concluded cases (or 15 concluded cases for patent owners or petitioners).
Aside from calculating the activity, success and performance scores for all IPR attorneys, and ranking of the 1000 most active in six categories, the report also includes 202 PTAB judges, the rankings of all 900+ law firms and up to 1000 most active companies in six categories which can be downloaded from the IPR Intelligence Report page. If your firm or company is a member of Patexia Concierge, you can download it by logging in to the site and clicking the “Download” button on the report page.
In the following weeks, we plan to publish the IP statistics for the first 9 months of 2020. Stay tuned...