software litigation probability USPTO patent data statistics

The first chart below shows the probability that a patent will become litigated for the whole USPTO (blue), commercial and business software IPC G06Q (red), and the total G06Q patent issued per year from 1990-2011. The chart tells the story pretty clearly. That is, software patents have a much higher possibility of litigation than average for the whole USPTO. Also, commercial software patenting is increasing significantly to over 3000 patents per year. In this data model probability is calculated by the number of litigated patents each year divided by a cumulative total of issued patents in each category starting in 1976. While patenting is increasing, litigation is increasing faster. The actual probabilities may be slightly higher than shown here considering that the cumulative totals are run from 1976 until the calculated year. The second chart showing the average age of litigated patents for the entire USPTO and G06Q show that…