As the end of the year rapidly approaches I thought I’d take a look back at some of the momentous events that have shaped the US patent landscape over the last 12 months. With ongoing debate over patent reform, the Supreme Court hearing six patent cases in its last term and what looks like the end of the smartphone litigation wars (or at least the beginning of the end), 2014 has certainly been eventful. Anyway, without further ado, here is my take on the most significant stories to break the stateside.

1. The Supreme Court issues its Alice decision – The patent community has never seen anything quite like it. The Supreme Court justices have been taking on more patent cases ever since Chief Justice Roberts took over in 2005, but no one expected them to hear six in one term. The oral arguments in Alice Corp v CLS Bank, suggested that SCOTUS was, arguably for the first time, really getting to grips with some of the weighty challenges in patent jurisprudence. When the decision was handed down, it did not seem to be that big a deal; but then a couple of months later all hell broke loose – with claims that it heralded the end of software patents and research indicating that lower courts were doing their worst. As this blog pointed out, if the doom-mongers are right, it could have significant and highly damaging implications for many of the US’s biggest patent owners. Others, though, were convinced that the panic had no basis in reality and argued their case vociferously. The reality is that it is too soon to tell – though Stanford law professor and Lex Machina founder Mark Lemley attributed a big fall in US patent suits to the Supreme Court judgment.
2. Patent litigation starts to fall – The first signs that patent litigation was on the decline in the US came from in early October courtesy of Lex Machina. The data provider revealed that the number of cases filed in September had dropped by 40% year-on-year. They dropped a further 33% in October suggesting that the dynamics of a changed patent market were starting to take hold. Research undertaken by Unified Patents, meanwhile, suggested that NPE suits were also significantly down (an attempt to downplay this notwithstanding). As Lemley pointed out, the drop in litigation as well as recent Supreme Court decisions and the continued impact of the AIA, suggested that Congress should hit the pause button on patent reform. If the downward trend of the last few months of 2014 continues into 2015, the conversation in Washington DC could change markedly.

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