As part of our ongoing project to pit major companies against each other to see who comes out on top in patent prosecution, we are now taking a turn to the great American automotive industry. The two companies in our ring this week are two giants of the field, and two of the most iconic American companies in existence--Ford and General Motors (GM). As a car-obsessed culture, the products these companies produce are etched into our national psyche and have even become part of our national identity. For Ford, classics such as the Thunderbird, Mustang, and Falcon come to mind. In GM's case, we have the Chevrolet Bel-Air, Cadillac Escalade, and Pontiac GTO. These vehicles evoke images of American individualism, the open road, and endless possibility.
While these products conjure up strong emotions for many, the companies that produce them are more concerned with making money. The best way for them to do this is to protect their innovations through intellectual property laws, thus encouraging the competition to pursue their own innovations and giving American consumers a wide variety of innovative, high-quality automobiles to choose from. It is this struggle that has kept Ford and GM on their toes throughout the decades. However, which comes out on top in obtaining patent protection for their products? Using Juristat's Marketing Reports, we compared a few key metrics of effectiveness in patent prosecution. Below are some graphs illustrating our findings.

Battles between tech companies are some of the most complex and high-stakes litigation in patent law. Apple’s recent infringement suit against Samsung spanned several years, multiple continents, and involved tens of millions of dollars in damages. In addition to battling it out in the courtroom, tech companies are also waging a war for the loyalty of consumers, as the products these companies produce become ever more essential parts of our daily lives. In this consumer-driven atmosphere, the two tech companies that provoke some of the most heated debates over which is more innovative are Apple and Google, whose devices, apps, and operating systems inspire intense loyalty among their users.

TC 2400 handles applications touching on computer networks, multiplex communication, video distribution, and cybersecurity. Its overall allowance rate is 62%, making it quite a bit lower than the USPTO average of 71%. In terms of average speed to disposition, it takes an average of 43.8 months to prosecute an application to disposition, making it the slowest technology center in the USPTO. Below are the top 10 fastest firms in TC 2400. All firms were selected from IP Today's top firms for 2015 and have at least 100 disposed applications in the technology center. The firms are ranked by the average number of months between an application's filing date and the date it is either allowed or abandoned.

As the home of art units covering software and business methods, TC 3600 has been the focus of heavy attention since the Alice decision in June of last year. Its average allowance rate is 61.2%, which is below the USPTO average of 72%,. Its average speed to disposition is 35.3 months months, bringing it in line with the USPTO average of 35.8 months.  All firms below are ranked by allowance rate. The firms were selected from IP Today's top firms for 2015 and have at least 100 applications disposed in TC 3600. Allowance rate was calculated by dividing the number of a firm's allowed applications by the total number of the firm's allowed and abandoned applications.

Technology Center 1700 covers a broad range of technologies, including diverse fields such as organic chemistry, fuel cells, adhesives, and food. Its average allowance rate is 57.7%, which is quite a bit below the USPTO average of 72%.  Its average speed to disposition is 36.6 months, bringing it very much in line with the USPTO average of 35.8 months. Below are the top 10 fastest firms in TC 1700. All firms were chosen from IP Today's top firms for 2015 and have at least 100 disposed applications in the technology center. The rankings below are based on the average number of months between an application's filing date and the date of its disposition.

TC 2100 handles computer-related applications, including applications touching on data processing, memory, information security, and artificial intelligence. Its overall allowance rate is 66.2%, which is slightly below the USPTO average of 71.3%. In terms of average speed to disposition, it takes an average of 40.6 months to prosecute an application in TC 2100, which is slightly slower than the USPTO average of 35.8 months. Below are the top 10 firms based on allowance rate in TC 2100. All firms were selected from IP Today's top firms for 2015 and have at least 100 disposed applications in the technology center.

IPR challenges arise most often when a party is sued for patent infringement and the defendant files an IPR petition to have the patent, or at least the claims at issue, invalidated. This scenario is the one that most legislators who drafted the America Invents Act had in mind when they established IPR as a quicker and cheaper alternative to federal district court litigation. Kyle Bass, the Dallas-based hedge fund manager and president of Hayman Capital, has found a more creative use for IPR. Hailed by many as a visionary, Bass rose to prominence after predicting several large-scale economic events, including the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. In February of 2015, he announced that his next venture would be a foray into the world of pharmaceutical patents.
Bass’s latest strategy is to file and publicize IPR challenges against pharmaceutical patents, betting that the threat of invalidation will cause the parent company’s stock prices to drop. He then either short sells that company’s stock or invests in other companies that would profit if the patents at issue were invalidated. There is evidence that this strategy works, as Bass’s first IPR challenge against Acorda Therapeutics caused its shares to drop by 9.65%. Because pharmaceutical companies enjoy a 20-year period of market exclusivity while their patents are in force before generics can be sold, drug prices during that period are artificially high. Accusing pharmaceutical companies of holding “BS patents,” Bass believes that invalidating them, or at least causing their stock prices to drop through the threat of invalidation, will result in lower drug prices. To demonstrate this ostensible concern for the consumer, Bass even formed an entity called the “Coalition for Affordable Drugs” to be the petitioner in his IPR challenges. As of the date of publication, Bass has filed 32 such petitions.

Assessing the productivity of a law firm is a tricky business, and can be measured in multiple ways, including total number of applications filed, number of attorneys, and number of patents granted, among others.
More than just measuring the total output of a firm, we were interested in measuring the productivity of patent prosecutors (attorneys and agents) inside a firm. Due to employee turnover, measuring this at the firm level is somewhat of a difficult task. However, in an attempt to minimize the influence of turnover, we limited our results to those firms among IP Today’s 2015 top patent firms that had at least 10 prosecutors and we restricted the date range to patents granted within the last 10 years.

When measuring the overall success and efficiency of a law firm’s patent prosecution practice, there are several metrics available, including overall allowance rate, time to disposition, and average number of office actions. Allowance rate is one of the most common metrics, but allowance rate merely tells us how many applications received NOAs, and nothing of the quality of those applications. Besides merely getting an application allowed, clients are also concerned about the quality and scope of their claims. One way to determine this is by measuring how well a law firm preserves claims through prosecution.
Below is a ranking of the top 10 firms that lose the fewest dependent claims in prosecution among IP Today’s top patent firms for 2015. All firms have at least 100 disposed applications. We measured claim preservation by determining a law firm’s average number of dependent claims per application at publication and comparing this to the firm’s average number of claims per application at allowance.