We’re still below 3000---litigation is contained.

There were fewer patent suits filed in 2023 than in any year for over a decade, a drop that attorneys attribute to wariness among some patent litigants due to funding disclosure rules in one prominent patent venue and changes in how cases are assigned to judges in another.

A total of 3,111 patent lawsuits were brought in U.S. district courts last year, a 19% drop from the 3,839 in 2022 and the fewest in any year since 2010, . From 2017 to 2022, between 3,500 and 4,000 suits were filed each year.

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Lex Machina said the drop appears to be tied to fewer suits being brought by what the legal analytics company describes as "high-volume plaintiffs," or those that file at least 10 patent cases within a 365-day period.

Cases filed by such companies fell 45% between 2022 and 2023, the report found. When high-volume plaintiffs are excluded, the number of new suits has held steady at around 2,200 per year between 2018 and 2023, according to Lex Machina.

When the relatively few companies that file numerous patent suits slow down, it can have a notable impact on overall filing data, so "I think the issue is more micro than it is macro," said Patrick Muffo of .