IP Litigation Clearinghouse launched

A press release from MarketWatch titled Stanford Law School Launches Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse notes:

The Law, Science & Technology Program at Stanford Law School today [8 Dec 08] launched the Stanford Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse (IPLC), a first-of-its-kind online database that offers comprehensive information about intellectual property disputes within the United States. This publicly available, online research tool will enable scholars, policymakers, lawyers, judges, and journalists to review real-time data about IP legal disputes that have been filed across the country, and ultimately to analyze the efficacy of the system that regulates patents, copyrights, trademarks, antitrust, and trade secrets.

IPBiz got a chuckle out of quote attributed to Joshua Walker: "The IPLC is agnostic on policy, indifferent to popular myth (from any source), and intensely focused on illuminating empirical reality--the truth--however complex, counterintuitive, or discomfiting about IP litigation." Of popular myth, see 8 JMRIPL 80 (2008) discussing a situation wherein a Stanford economist relied on a non-existent article in the New York Times to advance a theory about inventions, a theory later relied upon by a Stanford IP professor.

[IPBiz also got a chuckle from a post at truth on the market that Economists want to do relevant work. with the JMRIPL analysis suggesting the Stanford economist wanted to bend reality to conform to his pre-established beliefs.]

Yes, Mark Lemley is mentioned. One has:

Already, Lemley has used the data from the IPLC to run a number of empirical studies. He has recently co-authored a working paper with Christopher Cotropia, associate professor of law at University of Richmond School of Law, which debunks the notion that a high number of patent cases brought by plaintiffs involve copying or theft, findings that will be published in early 2009 in the North Carolina Law Review.

"In fact, the percent of these cases involving copying is quite small--only 2 to 3 percent," Lemley said. "These findings have implications for public policy. I believe that the laws and policies we create should address truly widespread, substantial problems ascertained from hard data, rather than those we collectively imagine are happening based on a few anecdotes."

The remark about "based on a few anecdotes" evokes Emerson's aphorism about silverware. ["The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."]

***
Of pleadings in litigation, note the article by R. DAVID DONOGHUE which includes the text:

The Supreme Court readjusted the playing field when addressing pleading
standards in a complex antitrust case. In Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, [127 S. Ct. 1955 (2007). ] the Court
held:

While a complaint attacked by a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss does not
need detailed factual allegations, a plaintiff's obligation to provide the
“grounds” of his “entitle[ment] to relief” requires more than labels and
conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action
will not do. Factual allegations must be enough to raise a right to relief
above the speculative level, on the assumption that all the allegations in the
complaint are true (even if doubtful in fact).9