Docket Alarm is excited to announce the latest addition to its analytics platform: claim institution and cancellation histograms. These features allow attorneys to dig further into Docket Alarm’s PTAB statistics around instituted petitions— these graphs illustrate what types of petitions are instituted, what types of petitions are not, and why.

  

The claim institution histogram shows how many patent claims were instituted within each petition instituted by the PTAB. The graph shown above indicates that the highest number of instituted petitions, 140, had instituted claims numbering around six or seven claims per petition, with the bulk of the instituted petitions (around 40%) having ten claims or less per petition. 

Additionally, Docket Alarm also has a claim cancelation histogram, which is an aggregate view of all petitions instituted by the PTAB and how many claims contained in those petitions were canceled. The graph above shows that for the majority of instituted petitions (about 220), around 20 claims or less are canceled.

This information can be highly valuable to attorneys— these statistics inform their decision-making and assist them in formulating their litigation strategies.

For example, if you are drafting an IPR petition with a high number of claims, you want to know if that high number has any affect on the likelihood of your petition being instituted. By looking at the above histogram of claim institution, the average instituted petition has 20 or less claims instituted.

Given this information, you may decide that it might be better to break up an IPR petition with a large number of claims into several smaller petitions with smaller groups of claims. This may increase the likelihood of one or more of those petitions being instituted.

Conversely, if you have an IPR petition with 20 claims, you may decide that the chance of the petition being instituted outweighs the extra time, sacrifice in efficiency, and higher cost of breaking up the petition into two or three smaller petitions.

These histograms can also be customized to reflect a particular judge or technology center. This allows attorneys to research judges they may be appearing before and determine whether that particular judge is more or less likely to institute IPR petitions with large numbers of claims. Likewise, configuration also allows attorneys to see if more or less claims are instituted based on technology centers relevant to their petition.  

To view more statistics on all aspects of the PTAB, visit Docket Alarm’s analytics platform.