Results from the 2009 AIPLA Economic Survey at 138-141 show that the cost of the average patent lawsuit, $5 million in 2007, has increased 10 percent to $5.5 million. The same article in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 17, Dec. 2009 at 26, by an Akin Gump partner, notes some other spending metrics. Sanford Warren writes: “Since 2001, the cost of patent, trademark and copyright lawsuits has risen 48 percent, 38 percent and 73 percent respectively.”
Those cost increases, on the order of 5-8 percent a year, do not strike me as outlandish, not when inflation ran around 2-4 percent a year and e-discovery’s volcano erupted during this period (See my post of Aug. 19, 2009 #3: six metaposts on intellectual property.).