New study finds 90% of tech patent lawsuits in first half of 2015 were filed by patent trolls
Patent troll lawsuits head toward all-time high — Of high-tech patent suits, 90 percent are filed by “non-practicing entities.” — New patent statistics show that patent litigation …
Context & Ripple Effects
The first half of 2015 was peak-era troll litigation: months earlier a non-practicing entity won a $15.7M verdict against Samsung over a Bluetooth claim, and the most prolific filer of 2014, eDekka, was still mass-docketing cases before an East Texas judge dismissed 168 of them. This study quantifies how dominant NPEs had become in high-tech suits specifically.
The follow-on coverage shows what happened next: Q3 2015 filings fell 33% year-over-year on the back of fewer East Texas troll cases, and a 2017 study found East Texas filings dropped more than 60% in the 90 days after SCOTUS curtailed venue shopping. The pattern that emerges is volume driven by forum choice, not underlying invention.
First-order effects
- Tech companies defending high-tech suits are almost never facing operating rivals — nine in ten plaintiffs hold no products, so every case is a settlement-extraction play rather than a market dispute.
Second-order effects
- Judicial pushback follows the volume: East Texas judges begin pruning mass-filed dockets and SCOTUS tightens venue rules, cutting filings sharply in the favored district.
Third-order effects
- Forum shopping migrates rather than dies — as East Texas closes off, litigation concentrates in new permissive venues like West Texas, meaning structural relief depends on venue law, not any single court's posture.
The trend: Patent litigation is increasingly shaped by where suits can be filed rather than what was invented, with troll volume tracking venue rules district by district.