PATENT OFFICE REPLY TO SENATOR HART'S LETTER OF MARCH 19, 1973 Appendix B2 CHART B2-U.S. PATENTS BY UNITED STATES AND FOREIGN OWNERSHIP Introduction This chart provides the same type of information as set forth in Chart B1 except that U.S. and foreign ownership is indicated by ownership by individuals (including the individual inventor and individual assignee), corporations, and governments. Again, all foreign countries are considered together. Year of issuance CHART B2.-U.S. ISSUED PATENTS BY UNITED STATES AND FOREIGN OWNERSHIP Total patents U.S. ownership Foreign ownership issued Total Individuals Corporations Governments Total Individuals Corporations Governments PATENT OFFICE REPLY TO SENATOR HART'S LETTER OF MARCH 19, 1973 Appendix B3 CHART B3-U.S. PATENTS BY COUNTRY OF APPLICANT Introduction This chart shows the numbers of U.S. patents issued over a ten-year period, arranged according to country of residence of the applicants. CHART B3.-U.S. ISSUED PATENTS BY COUNTRY OF APPLICANT Country 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 United States. 37, 176 38,410 50, 332 54, 634 51, 274 45, 782 50,395 47,073 55,988 51,515 3 2 1 1 1 Argentina. CHART B3.-U.S. ISSUED PATENTS BY COUNTRY OF APPLICANT-Continued PATENT OFFICE REPLY TO SENATOR HART'S LETTER OF MARCH 19, 1973 Appendix B4 CHART B4-U.S. APPLICATIONS FILED BY COUNTRY OF APPLICANT Introduction This chart shows the number of U.S. patent applications filed over a ten-year period by U.S. and foreign applicants, arranged by country of residence of the applicants. Country Sweden. Switzerland Tanzania. CHART B4-U.S. APPLICATIONS FILED BY COUNTRY OF APPLICANT-Continued PATENT OFFICE REPLY TO SENATOR HART'S LETTER OF MARCH 19, 1973 APPENDIX C C. PATENT LITIGATION IN THE FEDERAL COURTS The last paragraph of page 3 of your letter is a request for a summary of the past five years of: (A) patent litigation in the Federal courts, both at the District Court and Appellate level, including: (1) The number and identification of cases and patents litigated: (2) the holdings and rate of patent validity and invalidity, infringement, misuse, and fraud or inequitable behavior (and the specific grounds therefor); and, (B) with respect to the above patents, review during patent prosecution, before (1) the Board of Appeals; (2) the Board of Patent Interferences; (3) the CCPA; and (4) others. In accordance with your comment, the Patent Office extracted the information contained herein from the compiled notices filed in the Patent Office under the provisions of 35 U.S.C. 290. The information so obtained was cross-checked for accuracy and completeness against the reported decisions in the United States Patents Quarterly and a computer printout showing those recent U.S. patents in which (during their Patent Office prosecution) decisions were rendered by the Board of Appeals and/or by the Board of Patent Interferences. This tabulation forms Appendix C. A complete answer to your request in (B), supra, would dictate an inspection of each patented file. However, since such an undertaking would be impossible within the time allotted, no attempt was made to provide complete information on each litigated patent as to prior review within the Patent Office, or by its reviewing courts, before its issuance. The results of the study are set forth in the accompanying table. Explanatory remarks In the interest of clarity and elimination of any misconception as to the meaning and interpretation of the statistics tabulated above, the following explanation is offered. Number of cases The number of individual cases with a holding (dismissed, valid, injunction, etc.) during the period from January 1, 1968 to December 31, 1972, was found to be approximately 2,000. Although the actual figure was determined to be slightly in excess of 2,000, a recognition of the opportunity for mistake, taken with a potential high percentage of error, discussed infra, renders any more specific number statistically meaningless. Number of patents The number of individual patents litigated during the five-year period, in which the suit was terminated by dismissal, consent judgment, summary judgment, or holdings of validity, invalidity, injunction, etc., was found to be approximately 2025. Of those, the number of patents in which there was a judgment of validity, invalidity or infringement totalled 988. For reference purposes, it is noted that during this five-year period, the Patent Office issues approximately 360,000 patents. The percentage of patents litigated with respect to the total number of patents issued over this five-year period is 0.56%. Further, the number of patents issued by the Patent Office covering the time span from the earliest reported litigated patent included in this study (#2,126,786) to the latest reported litigated patent indicated in the study (#3,678,148) is approximately 1,550,000. The percentage of patents litigated with respect to this number is 0.13%. Patents held valid or invalid Validity statistics may vary. They may be (a) inclusive of each individual court holding of validity or invalidity, (b) limited to holdings within each of the judicial circuits, (c) restricted to a single holding representing the final adjudication of the patent's validity, or (d) directed only to the decisions of the appellate courts. In this study, the validity or invalidity of a given patent has been determined by tabulating the result or decision of the highest court in which the litigation was conducted and such holdings were made. Where two or more courts concurred in holding the same patent valid or invalid, that patent was counted as valid or invalid only once. In the rare instances where conflicting decisions on validity by coordinate tribunals have occurred, the patent was counted as invalid. It was noted that many court opinions and §290 notices did not point out whether all, or only some, of the claims of a patent were held valid or invalid. Where a court did explicitly hold some claims valid and other claims invalid, the patent was counted as valid, inasmuch as the patent remains in force with valid claims therein. A consent judgment of validity or invalidity, where denominated as such in the §290 notice, was counted as a holding of validity or invalidity. However, infringement and injunction holdings, without any mention of validity, were not presumed to be findings of validity. Rate of patent invalidity The term "rate of patent invalidity" appears to have no recognized definite meaning. Such rate may be calculated as a percentage of total patents litigated or only as a percentage of those litigated patents having a holding of validity or invalidity. The latter base has been employed in this study. It is to be stressed that there is no evident link between the characteristics of the litigated patents which caused them to be litigated and the characteristics of the remaining unlitigated patents which would justify the conclusion that the rate of invalidity noted above can be extrapolated to, or is in anyway representative of, the total patent universe. Infringement Instances of infringement are not always indicated in the report of the courts' decisions. Often there is no explicit holding that a daim is infringed, although such conclusion would be implicit because the court enjoined the defendant from making, using or selling certain devices. Accordingly, in the |