Intellectual property has been in the spotlight this past year, from a landmark Copyright Fair Use case in the U.S. Supreme Court, to the more than 100 AI-related lawsuits working their way through the legal system. Despite the publicity surrounding intellectual property, patent litigation filings were down roughly 25 percent in 2023, due in part to a large decline in IP Edge filings, which normally account for hundreds of cases each year. The number of new trademark cases stayed about the same while copyright filings increased slightly.
Overall, filings in federal district court and U.S. courts of appeal declined this past year. In district courts, this change occurred largely because of a reduction in multidistrict litigation (MDL) cases directly filed in a single district. At the same time, terminations of cases rose greatly, most, again, being a subset of MDL cases. Because MDL cases disproportionately affect both the new filings this past year and skew the time to termination, they have been excluded from the calculation of the average number of months from filing to disposition shown in the map to the right.
The federal appellate courts likewise saw a drop in filings, however, not as severe, at a 5 percent decrease across the board. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, however, saw an overall 7 percent increase in filings and a 38 percent increase in appeals from U.S. District Courts.
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