The last few weeks, our Data Science Team analyzed the most active petitioners in Inter-Partes Review (IPR) cases. Now we have turned our attention towards the patent owners in IPR cases. Our analysis shows that since IPR’s inception in 2012 through the end of 2016, over 5,990 cases were filed. These cases targeted patents owned by more than 1,700 unique entities from individuals to non-practicing entities (NPE) and operating companies. The top ten entities were named as patent owners in 555 cases or approximately 9 percent of all cases filed.

The first company, Zond Inc. is headquartered in Mansfield, Massachusetts (www.zpulser.com) with a total of 125 petitions filed by 9 petitioners against 10 of their US patents. The petitioners included Intel, Toshiba, Renesas Electronics, GlobalFoundries, Advanced Audio Devices, TSMC and Gillette.

The second company on the list is Magna Electronics, an operating company in the automotive industry, which had 35 of its patents challenged 71 times by only three companies, all auto-parts manufacturers: Dako North America, Valeo and TRW Automotive Holding.

Top Patent Owner (by IPR Cases)	Cases	Patents	Petitioner
Zond	125	10	9
Magna Electronics	71	35	3
VirnetX	66	15	7
Display Technologies	56	9	11
AT&T Intellectual Property	46	24	11
Finjan	42	15	5
Intellectual Ventures	40	23	8
American Vehicular Sciences	40	17	8
Contentguard Holdings	36	11	2
Clouding IP	33	13	6

The data shows that some patent owners are targeted more than others. For example, while Intellectual Ventures is the largest patent aggregation firm with many active licensing programs, it is 7th on the list after several small entities.

We decided to review this from a different angle. Instead of the highest number of IPR cases, we looked at the highest number of patents challenged. Manga Electronics with 35 patents was at the top, followed by AT&T with 24 and Intellectual Ventures with 23 patents. From 2012 through the end of 2016, total of 5,992 IPR challenges were filed. In total 3,496 unique patents were challenged. The top 10 companies accounted for 5 percent or 194 of all patents.

Top Patent Owner (by Patents)	Patents	Cases	Petitioners
Magna Electronics	35	71	3
AT&T Intellectual Property	24	46	11
Intellectual Ventures	23	40	8
Ultratech International	18	19	1
American Vehicular Sciences	17	40	8
Bonutti Skeletal Innovations	17	29	9
VirnetX	15	66	7
Finjan	15	42	5
Ericsson	15	32	3
Personalized Media Communications	15	17	4

Finally, we looked at the number of unique petitioners to determine the patent owners that have been targeted the most by other companies. The first three patent owners were Display Technologies, AT&T Intellectual Property and E-Watch, all with 11 petitioners challenging their patents.

Top Patent Owner (by Petitioners)	Petitioners	Cases	Patents
Display Technologies	11	56	9
AT&T Intellectual Property	11	46	24
E-Watch	11	28	6
Cellular Communications Equipment	10	22	10
Signal IP	10	21	7
Zond	9	125	10
Bonutti Skeletal Innovations	9	29	17
Straight Path IP Group	9	27	5
Adaptix	9	14	4
Uniloc USA	9	9	5

Analyzing the patent owners by number of cases, petitioners and patents shows that some patents have been targeted many times by a few entities. For example, total of 125 IPR challenges have been filed against 10 patents owned by Zond Inc. These were filed by only 9 entities. Zond has the highest ratio of IPR cases to patents (i.e., 12.5). Many factors may be taken into account when a company decides to file an IPR petition. For example, the products targeted by the patents, size of the market and the revenue generated by the products, strength of the patent, the technology domain and access to strong prior art, historical behaviour and financial health of the patent owner are among the reasons that companies consider before they decide to file a petition. While we showed that IPR denial rate has been rising, some have argued that from the patent owner’s perspective, often times the patent is beaten so many times by different parties that regardless of overall denial rate of IPR, none of the claims for a specific group of patents will survive all the challenges.

In the coming weeks, we will focus and dig deeper into Zond cases to better understand the outcome of the cases at the claim-level, the counsels that represented them before the PTAB, the judges involved in their cases, and finally, what percentage of claims survived all those challenges.