Clarivate Analytics Releases 2024 NPE Global Litigation Report

Recently, Clarivate Analytics released the "2024 NPE Global Litigation Report". The report shows that the United States, Germany and mainland China are the three countries and regions with the most infringement cases filed by NPE.

The report shows that by far, the United States has the most active NPE activities in the world. In the period from 2018 to 2023, the infringement cases filed by NPEs in the United States accounted for 97.2% of the total cases, while Germany and mainland China accounted for 1.8% and 0.4% respectively. However, if we compare 2012-2017 with 2018-2023, the growth momentum of these three countries is different. From the current trend, the number of NPE infringement cases in the United States has decreased by 43%, while the number in mainland China has increased by 600%. At the same time, Germany has seen a large decline in NPEs since 2018.

Overall, infringement lawsuits filed by NPEs declined from 2012 to 2019, and by 2020, NPE infringement cases began to stabilize at around 2,000 per year. The report said that during the period 2012-2017, patent validity challenges filed against NPEs worldwide were on the rise. However, from 2018 to 2023, the number of patent validity challenges filed against NPEs worldwide has declined.

At the same time, the report also shows that national institutions are particularly active in information and communication technologies, including digital communications, telecommunications, computer technology and audio-visual technology. These technologies account for 64% of NPE patents in the United States and 74% of patents asserted by NPEs in the European Union. Compared with non-NPE entities, NPEs have a higher number of patent lapses, indicating that NPEs are facing patent quality challenges.

But in any case, NPE has become an organic part of the entire intellectual property ecosystem, and has become a lever and means to monetize intellectual property intangible assets.

Interested readers can go to the official website of Yezhima to download the full report.