St. Louis IP attorney and Harness IP Principal Bryan Wheelock was recently featured in Inside Counsel discussing his idea for a new metric: the Litigation Year, or “Lit Year” for short. As discussed in the article, the Lit Year provides a useful way to measure and compare costs based on the median cost of funding IP litigation for one year.

The benchmark will be primarily useful to businesses determining a strategy for their intellectual property assets. With IP litigation costs soaring into space, The Lit Year offers a way to frame the conversation around relative costs. By asking oneself how long it would take to “spend the equivalent amount in litigation,” is allows better prospective on handling matters that may or may not be necessary one’s business.

“Consider a company trying to decide whether to bring a $350,000 IPR to challenge a patent asserted against them. This might initially sound budget busting, but if you consider that it is only 0.42 lit years — the amount you would spend in about 5 months of litigation — it might make sense,” says Wheelock.

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