A recent article, “What Patent Attorney Fee Awards Really Look Like,” by Saurabh Vishnubhakat published in the Duke Law Journal Online, studies attorney fee awards in patent litigation.  The article reads:

This study confirms the commonsense view that, in patent litigation, plaintiffs tend to receive attorney fee awards more often than defendants do, and that such awards are generally larger when defendants receive them.  Notably, attorney fee awards are an order of magnitude lower than prior studies have estimated.  Attorney fee awards vary, in magnitude and distribution, according to the technology area of the patents involved in the dispute.  Finally, attorney fee awards in patent litigation often follow systematic calculation and discounting with explanatory discussion, reflecting a pattern of fact-intensive evaluation by district judges of such awards.

This article was posted with permission.  Saurabh Vishnubhakat writes and teaches on intellectual property law, civil procedure, and administrative law, particularly from an empirical perspective.  After completing a faculty fellowship at Duke Law School, he was most recently appointed an associate professor at the Texas A&M University School of Law.  He is admitted to the state bar of Illinois, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court.