Tech advancements lead to steady increase in IP suits
Jennifer LeClaire
Special to the Journal
From Roche Diagnostics' settlement with Promega over its biotechnology patent to Microsoft Corp.'s periodic multimillion-dollar payouts for alleged patent infringement, it's difficult to read the business news pages without running into headlines about intellectual property lawsuits.
But the evidence for the rise of IP-related suits is more than anecdotal. The number of these cases, which includes copyrights, trademarks and patents, has increased 7.3 percent from 2000 to 2004 nationally, according to the Administrative Offices of the U.S. Courts.
Specifically, there were 8,738 IP-related lawsuits in 2000 compared to 9,590 in 2004.
