The following is a post by my colleague Anthony J. Fuga. Anthony and I regularly work together defending retailers against patent trolls.
MarketWatch’s recent blog post titled “Why retailers became a top target of patent trolls” contained a good, albeit short, rundown of some of the difficulties retailers are facing. Unfortunately, much of the information contained in the blog post will not be news to you, as retailers routinely deal with trolls. A few of the more interesting and/or troubling points from the post include:
- The retail sector is now the number 1 target of trolls;
- Trolls lose 92% of the cases that do not settle;
- 53% of the retailers sued had sales of less than $10 million; and
- Only about 2% of the 36,629 patent cases filed and terminated between 2000 and 2013 resulted in the awarding of compensatory damages.