'Every grab for the brass ring carries risk'
Litigation is frought with uncertainty: settlement decisions, pretrial discovery decisions, trial strategy decisions, and appeal decisions.
DECISION TREE
The first step in litigation risk analysis, indeed in any risk analysis, is to identify and organize all (or at least the significant) uncertainties that comprise a problem.
These uncertainties are then schematically arranged in consecutive order, starting with the present and progressing into the future, to produce a flowchart encompassing all of the uncertainties and
all of the possible outcomes of the problem. The flowchart is then reformatted as a decision tree.
The Odds Against Going to Trial
~1% of all patents are ever litigated.
76% of patent suits settle, but generally not until each side incurs roughly $1 million in legal fees.
66% of patents claimed are found infringed at trial.
The US Patent Litigation Situation
2006: new patent suits filed: 2200+
2005: Median damage award: $6M
2001-2005:
Top 25 patent damage awards ranged from $86.5M to $529M
Top 25 patent settlements ranged from $141M to $1.2B