Patent litigation slowed down in the US last year with a fall in the number of patents lawsuit filed. According to research by Unified Patents, patent lawsuits dropped by 17 per cent to 5002. The majority of these (63 per cent) involved hardware, software and networking companies. The research also found that in the high-tech sector, 83 per cent of the litigation was from companies involved in licensing patents for their revenue. Healthcare, on the contrary, attracted 18 per cent of lawsuits whilst other industries accounted for 27 per cent of cases.