N.D. Illinois: 2009 Intellectual Property Filings
The Northern District of Illinois continued its historically busy intellectual property docket in 2009. For the first time in several years, there was a slight decrease in patent case filings. Of course, that is not surprising in light of a difficult economy and patent filings being down across the country. And I suspect that the new Local Patent Rules* will result in an increase in patent litigation filings for 2010. Trademark cases bucked their downward trend over the last several years, and were up by about 10% over 2008. Finally, copyright cases continued a relatively steep decline. But despite the decline, the Northern District maintains one of the most active copyright dockets in the country. This chart shows the number of yearly patent, trademark and copyright cases filed in the Northern District during calendar years 2006 through 2009 (data gathered from the Stanford IP Clearinghouse and Pacer):
|
Northern District IP Case Filings |
||||
|
Case Type |
2006 |
2007 |
2008 |
2009 |
|
Patent |
126 |
141 |
151 |
137 |
|
Trademark |
136 |
130 |
128 |
136 |
|
Copyright |
194 |
123 |
81 |
41 |
* Click here for much more on the Local Patent Rules in the Blog's archives.
