The Rise and Fall of Dictionaries for Patent Claim Construction

Source: Professor Dennis Crouch at Patently-O

Acording to comments by Malcom Moody, "Since 1997, the number of patent decisions has risen by about 2% per year. Mooney's suggestion of 350 per year is a good average. See http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/statistics.html."

EG adds "Well, since we are in the mood for fluffy statistics, how about the number of patents with the word "dictionary" in the claims:"

year patents

2007 210

2006 204

2005 132

2004 123

2003 130

2002 148

2001 123

2000 163

1999 156

1998 163

1997 114

1996 80

1995 73

1994 78

1993 55

1992 51

1991 59

1990 48

For a linguist's take on the Supreme Court's use of dictionaries, see http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/johnson.html