專利品質與訴訟結果之研究：以美國 NPEs 為例

Abstract

非實施專利實體（Non-Practicing Entities, NPEs）握有大量專利卻不從事生產行為，他們大量興訟，為被告廠商帶來高額的訴訟成本，再透過和解來向被告索取賠償或是權利金。過去文獻發現NPEs的和解率並沒有顯著高於PEs（Practicing Entities），然而該發現卻未控制NPEs的類型，也未同時考慮系爭專利品質對其訴訟和解的影響。因此，本文蒐集2010年美國2,456筆NPEs和PEs為原告的專利訴訟資料，進一步將原告進行分類，在控制訴訟案的主審法官與原告律師等固定效果下，採用Firth Logistic Regression量化迴歸模型，探討原告類型和系爭專利的品質良窳，如訴訟案MLPs（Most litigated patents）比例和系爭專利範圍數等對其訴訟和解率的影響。實證結果發現：(1)僅在研發導向的大學與前新創公司（NPEs）發起的訴訟案之中，系爭專利的品質提升時對和解率有正向影響。 (2)對於大部分原告專利所有人（PEs和NPEs）而言，MLPs佔訴訟案系爭專利的比例越高，和解率越低，不過在個別發明者與專利授權公司發起的訴訟案中，卻呈現相反的趨勢。此乃證明NPEs類型和專利品質對於訴訟和解率有不同影響。

Non-practicing entities (NPEs) are often regarded as notorious characters in the intellectual property. They assert patent infringement, bringing massive cost of lawsuits for defendant firms, but end up seeking the nuisance value settlement. Previous studies found that the settlement rate of NPEs wasn’t significantly higher than PEs; however, they haven’t had constructed a comprehensive empirical model to consider in the effects of NPEs types, nor the quality of asserted patents on the settlement rates. In this article, we collected 2,456 patent infringement suits, asserted by either PEs or NPEs, during 2010 and used Firth Logistic Regression model to examine the impact of NPEs types and patent quality, such like MLPs (Most-litigated Patents) rate and number of claims, on the settlement rate, while controlling the fixed effect of judge, plaintiff’s attorney and other conditions. Our result indicates that: (1) Only among the infringement suits asserted by University and Failed Operating Company (both are R&D oriented NPEs), the patent quality is positively correlated with settlement rate. (2) To most of PEs and NPEs, the higher proportion of MLPs within all the asserted patents in one case, the lower settlement rate it may be. However, among the suits by Individual Inventor and Patent Holding Company, the proportion of MLPs ratio within asserted patents is negatively correlated with the settlement rate. It shows that the type of NPEs and the quality of asserted patents do affect the settlement rate of patent infringement lawsuits in different ways.