Government Accountability Office Takes Another Look at Third-Party Litigation Funding
The Government Accountability Office (GAO), which provides nonpartisan research to Congress, has released another study on third-party litigation funding (TPLF), this time focusing more closely on the financing of patent suits. Given that RPX members have exclusive access to a robust database of TPLF relationships (i.e., a database of more than 275 relationships between patent holders and specific litigation funders, all corroborated by publicly available data) and associated research and analyses, this report is unlikely to provide any new strategic intelligence to that group. However, the GAO’s report does reflect interviews of “patent litigation funders, large technology companies, research universities, law firms, district court judges, mediators, individual inventors, and other industry stakeholders”, offering a snapshot of evolving attitudes towards the practice and disclosure of litigation funding in the US patent space.