Read our latest coverage of patent law and intellectual property issues, from Silicon Valley to the U.S. Supreme Court.



A brainchild of Stanford patent law professor Mark Lemley, the IP clearinghouse is modeled after the school’s successful online securities litigation database. Started in 1996 by law professor Joseph Grundfest to monitor the effect of the 1995 Private Securities Reform Act, the database has since become a handy resource for legal scholars, journalists and lawyers.

But unlike the securities database, the IP litigation clearinghouse will cover more than one type of litigation. Walker said the plan is to initially track patent, copyright and trademark actions.

The patent database, likely to be launched first in a year or so, will cover federal, appellate and U.S. Supreme Court cases. It will also monitor cases at the International Trade Commission and the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

The database is expected to hold copies of motions, court opinions, judgments, office actions and settlement data, trackable by district or government agency.

Lemley, a leading scholar in patent law and one of the few who have authored empirical studies in the area, said having a database of all litigation should help his own research effort and encourage other scholars to conduct more IP-related studies.

“To my knowledge, there isn’t a comprehensive database of all intellectual property cases out there, and certainly there isn’t one that’s open to the public,” Lemley said. “Our hope is that over time the database will not just be about raw data but will become a central location for information and studies people have done about the IP system.”

The studies generated by the data should help Congress craft sound IP policies, he said.

“I’m involved in the patent reform debate, and one of the things that I found is that there’s an awful lot that people don’t know about the system,” he said. “I hear about patent trolls and one camp says their effect is de minimis and another camp says it is hurting the system. There ought to be a way for us to figure out answers to questions like that.”

HARD DATA

Collecting data on all IP cases filed in the country, however, is a monumental task. Just cataloging cases would require going through daily case filings at every district court in the country. Unlike securities litigation, IP law does not require litigants to give public notice of every legal action they file and the federal court system has no mechanism to separate IP cases from other civil filings.

University of Houston law professor Paul Janicke has started his own effort to track patent cases at the appellate level and knows the enormity of such an undertaking. His Web site, patstats.org, monitors all patent opinions issued by the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and other districts that publish their opinions.

“Most of the data needed for the doable aspects of [the Stanford] project are available on Pacer, but it is a great deal of work to monitor all the pending IP cases,” he said. “It would take considerable staff help and financial resources.”

Tracking settlement data would also be critical for any kind of useful database, according to Janicke, but that information could prove impossible to obtain.

Most cases � about 84 percent in patent cases and probably higher in trademark and copyright disputes � settle out of court, according to Janicke. And because contested adjudications are such a small part of the picture, he said, getting information on settled cases will be valuable.

“Most litigants will not reveal them,” he said. “They say the terms are confidential, so that will be the biggest challenge.”

Walker is aware of the logistical difficulties. He hopes, however, that by including representatives from the judiciary, the patent office and Congress in the project’s working group, they’ll be able to get plenty of government and private sector support.

And though not all the data he wants is available now, Walker plans to cull all the information he can. For example, to gather settlement data, Walker plans to search public Securities and Exchange Commission filings for any recorded information on patent settlements made by public companies. He is also hoping to devise a plan where settling parties can report settlement data anonymously.

“It’s going to be tough,” he said, “but it can be done.”

VESTED INTERESTS

So far, the project has attracted major corporate backers in the tech sector, including Intel Corp., Oracle Corp. and Qualcomm Inc., all of which have kicked in generous multiyear contributions. The group, however, is still looking for private sponsors in the biotech sector.

Lemley estimates that it will cost several hundred thousand dollars a year to keep the project running, supporting a full-time executive director, a database manager and several research assistants.

“It’s fairly pricey for an academic project but the more people we hire the faster we can finish everything,” he said.

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, Walker’s former law firm, has also made a three-year financial commitment to the project. Gary Weiss, head of Orrick’s IP litigation group, says the project could provide IP litigators valuable data for making decisions.

“The situation cries out for learning,” Weiss said. “People make very important decisions every day on where to file cases and how much to settle cases and what kind of license to take. Any kind of resource that can help companies in making those decisions should have significant economic impact.”