Patent Assertion Entity Activity

entries to the case observations used in the analysis using the four rules specified below. 362 These rules
assured that the retained case observation had the appropriate consolidated information from the
potentially multiple docket number-based entries.
To transform the potentially multiple docket number-based data entries into a single case observation
(i.e., a single observation for a dispute between a plaintiff and a defendant over specific patents-atissue),
the FTC implemented four rules. First, the FTC identified the docket that represented the status
of the litigation as of the close of our study period as the outcome of the litigation and kept this
observation as the case observation. The information on the status of the litigation included the variables
listed in the H.2 spreadsheet that describe the final disposition of the litigation. 363 Second, to measure
the duration of a case, the FTC defined the beginning of a case to be the first complaint date for any
docket where the plaintiff sued the defendant for infringement on the specific asserted patents. 364 Third,
to measure the degree to which plaintiffs favored certain jurisdictions in filing infringement lawsuits,
FTC retained the identity of the jurisdiction associated with the first complaint filed by the plaintiff
against the defendant on the specific patents-at-issue (rather than the final jurisdiction where a lawsuit
terminated) and associated that district with the case. Fourth, because patents may be added to or
removed from litigation during the course of a patent dispute, the FTC created a new patent field for the
case observation that consisted of the union of all patents-at-issue that were asserted against a defendant
by a plaintiff as long as there was a single patent-at-issue in common across the dockets submitted by
the Responding Firms. This new patent field allowed the tracking of a case over time even as the set of
patents named in the litigation changed. The FTC considered observations with the same plaintiff and
defendant but without any common patents-at-issue to be separate cases. Using these rules, the FTC
created a case-based observation that reflects key characteristics of the patent dispute: plaintiff,
defendant, patents-at-issue, initial complaint date, plaintiff’s selected district, and the outcome or status
362
After separating multiple defendant observations into separate observations for each defendant, 22% of observations were
dropped in reducing the data to a unique case.
363
For example, variables could describe whether: the court awarded damages, the litigation was pending, there was a court
order on the claims of asserted patents, there was a court decision on the merits, or if the litigation was settled with a patent
license agreement, and the settlement date if the litigation settled. See Appendix C: PAE Special Order.
364
This approach is similar to that employed by Gwendolyn G. Ball and Jay P. Kesan. Ball & Kesan, supra note 95; Kesan &
Ball, supra note 208.
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