Patexia Insight 104: Ranking the Top Patent Litigation Firms (2021)

Earlier this year we released our first Patent Litigation Intelligence Report. In this inaugural report, we evaluated the district court patent cases filed between July 1, 2017, and June 30, 2020. During this 3-year period, a total of 10,552 patent cases were filed. In total, 11,786 companies were named either defendants or plaintiffs and were represented by a total of 12,780 attorneys and 2,841 law firms. We ranked all the stakeholders (i.e., law firms, attorneys, defendants, and plaintiffs by activity and performance.

In Patexia Insight 98 we published the list of some of the top patent litigators for 2021. This week, we cover some of the top firms for patent litigation.

For this analysis, we measured the activity and performance of all stakeholders including plaintiffs, defendants, attorneys, and law firms in the following six categories:

1. Best Performing Overall
2. Best Performing Plaintiffs
3. Best Performing Defendants
4. Most Active Overall
5. Most Active Plaintiffs
6. Most Active Defendants

Although activity often is measured by the number of cases, we decided to also consider the number of patents. This is because the complexity and workload often grow somewhat linearly with the number of patents involved. In addition, post-AIA, sometimes plaintiffs file several cases (and sometimes hundreds of cases) if they are dealing with multiple defendants. This increases the case count but the workload often does not go up at the same pace.

      Activity = Weighted Average of Number of Cases and Unique Patents

To calculate the performance, we combined the activity and success for all the stakeholders. This is because corporate in-house counsel prefers to hire a firm that has the right experience which is a combination of activity and success. A firm with lots of unsuccessful cases is not considered the best despite all the experiences and similarly, a firm with a single successful case is not considered the best firm either.

                 Performance = Weighted Average of Activity and Success

To measure the success, we only evaluated the terminated cases. At the time of preparing the report, we counted a total of 5,998 terminated cases for the 3-year period of the study. The following table summarizes our methodology for success measurement:

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 complete report covers the top 1000 most active law firms, attorneys, and companies. It also includes the top 3 clients for each of the firms and law firms as well as the top 3 firms representing each of the defendants and plaintiffs.

The following table lists 15 of the best-performing and most active firms. Being ranked in the top 100 out of 2,841 firms places the firm in the top three percent (3%) in that particular category:

Law Firm	All Cases	Category	Rank
Russ August	271	Most Active (Plaintiff)	5
Quinn Emanuel	172	Best Performing (Plaintiff)	13
Perkins Coie	169	Best Performing (Overall)	15
Knobbe Martens	125	Most Active (Plaintiff)	7
Kirkland & Ellis	124	Most Active (Defendant)	10
Alston & Bird	109	Most Active (Overall).	20
Polsinelli	103	Most Active (Overall)	26
Desmarais LLP	74	Best Performing (Defendant)	41
Mintz Levin	64	Most Active (Plaintiff)	53
Womble Bond	62	Best Performing (Plaintiff)	31
Erise IP	54	Best Performing (Overall)	24
Sheppard Mullin	54	Best Performing (Defendant)	43
White & Case	42	Most Active (Defendant)	41
Banner & Witcoff	32	Best Performing (Plaintiff)	2
Wolf Greenfield	25	Best Performing (Overall)	68

 

In the following weeks, we plan to cover some of the best-performing ITC attorneys and law firms in 2021. We will also analyze the current status of patent-related Federal Circuit cases (CAFC) originated from PTAB, ITC, or district courts. Stay tuned!