Fish & Richardson has topped the list of more than 1000 law firms representing petitioners and patent owners in an inter partes review (IPR). An IPR is a procedure for challenging the validity of a United States patent before the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The procedure is conducted by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Fish & Richardson was found to be the most active firm in IPR with 625 cases on either side. Meanwhile White & Case was the best-performing law firm in IPR with a success rate of 91 per cent. 

Active

Of the more than 5,000 lawyers representing petitioners and patent owners, research company Patexia revealed that Naveen Modi of Paul Hastings was the most active IPR lawyer with 240 cases. Larissa Park of DLA Piper wa the best-performing IPR lawyer with a success rate of 100 per cent. Apple was the most active company out of more than 3,000 companies acting as petitioners and patent owners with involvement in 298 cases whilst GlobalFoundries was the best-performing company with a success rate of 100 per cent.

Patent quality

'As we move toward the knowledge based economy, intellectual assets and patents, in particular, are becoming more important than ever. Patent quality has been a key issue preventing a more liquid market for patent assets and IPR was introduced to address that for the current pool of enforceable patents,' said Patexia founder, Pedram Sameni. Patexia utilised data from all 6,580 Inter-Partes Review challenges filed since the programme’s inception in 2012 through the first half of 2017.