A leading global provider of transformative intelligence recently released the 2024 Non-Practicing Entity Global Litigation (NPE) Report to analyze NPE enforcement activities and their patent validity challenges across the globe. The report revealed that the United States, Germany and Mainland China are the three countries and regions with the most infringement cases filed by NPEs.

For this report, NPE is defined as an independent legal organization which owns or benefits from patent rights but does not sell or manufacture goods or provide goods-related services. Using the Clarivate Darts-ip™ database of patent case law, this report showed that among the countries and regions where most of infringement cases are filed by NPEs between 2018-2023, the U.S. accounts for 97.2% of the total, while Germany and Mainland China count for 1.8% and 0.4% respectively. However, the growth momentum differs in the top three countries when comparing 2012-2017 to 2018-2023. There was a 43% decrease in the number of U.S. NPE infringement cases, while the number in Mainland China increased 600% and Germany saw a strong decline starting in 2018.

This report showed that during 2012-2017, there was an undeniable trend of increasing patent validity challenges overall and of patent validity challenges filed against NPEs worldwide. While overall patent validity challenges slightly increased during 2018-2023, the number of patent validity challenges filed against NPEs worldwide slightly decreased.

Overall, infringement action filed by NPEs declined globally from 2012 to 2019. Starting in 2020, NPE infringement cases began to stabilize at around 2,000 per year.

NPEs are well known for being active in Information and Communication Technologies (i.e. digital communication, telecommunications, computer technology and audio-visual technology). These technologies account for 64% of the patents asserted by NPEs in the U.S. and for 74% of the patents asserted by NPEs in EU.

From Clarivate

May 16th, 2024