Wednesday, May 05, 2010

AO Report: Copyright Case Filings Dropped 63% From 2005 Through 2009

In a steady trend, copyright cases filed in the US dropped about 63% from 2005 through 2009 based on numbers from

2005      5,796
2006      4,944
2007      4,400
2008      3,234
2009      2,192

Source:  Report by the Administrative Office of the US Courts

Judicial Business of the United States Courts 2009

Table C-2A. U.S. District Courts—Civil Cases Commenced, by Nature of Suit, During the 12-Month Periods Ending September 30, 2005 Through 2009

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I ran a quick analysis a couple of months ago and the number of copyright decisions listed in Westlaw has increased steadily year-over-year for the more than the last decade. You can square the numbers (the drop in numbers of suits filed and the increase in number of copyright decisions) by looking at the decision by large labels to limit their campaign against peer-to-peer users.

Anonymous said...

What explains this decline?

Ray Dowd said...

I figured the decline was due to the RIAA stopping mass filings, but how does that explain an increase in decisions?

Unknown said...

Ray - is there any data on what percent of these copyright cases involve criminal vs. civil infringement?

Unknown said...

Aha - I found it in Table D-2 from the same report. The numbers you posted from Table C-2A were for civil copyright cases.

The corresponding numbers for criminal copyright cases are:

2005 23
2006 56
2007 38
2008 72
2009 48

Perhaps these numbers are not large enough to identify a trend.