By the time 2008 ended, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had issued its much-discussed Bilski ruling on the patentability of business methods, Congress still hadn’t passed patent reform, and the number of patent suits filed was down by about 8 percent from 2007 (the number of defendants dropped by 24 percent). Given the slowdown, it shouldn’t be surprising that there’s been something of a shake-up in the rankings in the latest edition of our annual patent litigation survey. The survey measures which firms are getting the bulk of this lucrative work.

  • Patent Litigation Survey: The Rankings
  • Other Firms Worth Noting
  • Methodology

    Another anomaly about last year: In our survey, we used a different definition of how long a case must be active for a firm to get credit for it than we have in the past. This year, we returned to our traditional way of doing things (for a further explanation of methodology, click here). Once we’d done that, we decided it made sense to compare the 2009 list to the one we produced two years ago (see chart). By any measure, Fish & Richardson comes out on top. While the firm’s 77-case workload in 2008 represented a 21 percent dip from the previous year, it was down just 3 percent from the 79 cases it handled while claiming the number one spot in 2007. Kirkland & Ellis ranked second, despite taking on a few less cases than it did two years ago. Two other top firms—Foley & Lardner and Howrey—slipped on the list from two years ago, despite essentially taking on a similar number of cases. Jones Day also suffered a modest drop after seeing a 23 percent dip in the amount of new work it took on last year compared to two years ago.

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