The Richter Scale^®

If you’re interested in what’s happening in the world of patent litigation, the folks over at Rethink(IP) - a blog devoted to “Rethinking the Practice of Intellectual Property (IP) Law”, provide a nice service.

They have managed to get some software developed which generates a list of the most recently filed patent suits all over the U.S., and publish that information on their site. The most recent such list can be found here.

The lower case letters until the title of the suit (which names the litigants) indicates which court the action is taking place in, while the docket number and date of suit can be found in the third and fourth lines of each listing. That information is sufficient to get you access to the briefs filed with the court, in most cases, via a service like PACER.

Rethink(IP) provides similar listings for copyright and trademark litigation.

I subscribed to their FeedBurner RSS feed so that I get the patent suit listings e-mailed to me. Very convenient and a great service.