By Donald Zuhn —

Earlier this month, we reported that
the PricewaterhouseCoopers 2007 Patent and Trademark Damages
Study showed that patent actions had dropped more than 11% in 2005.

The Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) reported today that data released this week from the
Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts
indicates that after falling by 11.5% in 2005, the number of filed patent suits
rose 4% in 2006.  The data for the past
10 years has been compiled by the IPO into a graph that can be obtained here.  As PricewaterhouseCoopers noted in its study,
the only decline in filed patent suits over the past decade occurred in 2005.