A recent article has much to say about non-practicing entities (NPEs). I have cherry picked from it and quoted several paragraphs. “Some 20 of the 300 or so known NPEs appear to account for roughly half of all NPE-related litigations, according to intelligence from Patent Freedom (www.patentfreedom.com). In 2008 alone,…
“In 2010 alone, NPEs filed 550 [patent suits] at a total cost of $7 billion to the defendant companies, according to defensive patent aggregator RPX Corp.” The quote comes from Intellectual Prop., Fall 2011 at 25. Does that mean last year the defendants in those suits paid $7 billion in…
A survey of US legal departments about electronic data discovery (EDD), conducted by ALM Legal Intelligence for T. Wade Welch & Associates, produced findings in a supplement to the September issue of Corporate Counsel. In a previous post I picked at the sample size, but nevertheless I want to point…
“For matters valued under $500,000, 71% of in-house counsel said they try to do as much EDD [electronic data discovery] as possible in-house.” This quote comes from research by ALM Legal Intelligence sponsored by T. Wade Welch & Associates, published in a supplement to the September issue of Corporate Counsel.…
Having just put up two posts – yesterday and today – with 29 costs that some legal departments bear (or might bear), I wanted to compile my most recent writings on internal legal department budgets. Internal budgets figure in other posts, but not necessarily specific expenses (See my post of…
The first 15 items of expense I covered in my post yesterday (See my post of Sept. 6, 2011: unusual expenses sometimes in legal department budgets.). Here are the final 14. Independent investigations (See my post of May 8, 2011: frustration of responsibility for costs but no control.). Insured costs…
First 15 of various expenditures irregularly (or rarely) included in legal department budgets Budgets of legal departments include many costs as a matter of course, such as salaries, cash bonuses, retreats and conferences, Continuing Legal Education, subscriptions, and a range of other common out-of-pocket disbursements. Even with that broad commonality,…
Law departments mostly know their own costs in disputes, and some even know how much time their members spend on different matters. Rarely, if ever, does a company, let alone a law department, know how much employees outside the law department invest in legal affairs. My most recent Morrison on…
“A combination of increasing automation, new business models, and offshoring has pushed down the average size of finance staff by 30% over the past six years – to 92 people per $1 billion of revenue.” The quote comes from CFO, Nov. 2010 at 48, and Hacket Group data, courtesy of…
Non-practicing entities (NPEs), which hold patents but make no products, have profited from suing practicing entities. Trolls versus companies, you can think of it. The Economist, Aug. 20, 2011 at 58, has a chart (from which I eyeballed the metrics that follow) based on PricewaterhouseCoopers data that shows median damages…