My July 2006 article “Value for money in global patent litigation – relative cost & time to 1st judgment in 8 key jurisdictions” has generated quite a deal of interest and debate.

I was presented at an International Bar Association with my permission by someone who I am sure is clever and had honourable and good intentions, but who evidently did not understand the data, and so I learnt the hard lesson of not agreeing to let others present your research.

The article was written to drive a debate about cost and time effectiveness across jurisdictions in IP litigation, and especially patent litigation.  In it I ranked countries according to speed to judgment and relative cost (compared to market size).  Australia comes out quite poorly on both fronts, and unsurprisingly, having discussed this with people across the globe, all of the criticism of the article has come from Australians.

The data is now a little out of date, and there are a few assumptions.  However, having sat and talked with a couple of very clever Australian barristers today, I thought it timely to reopen the debate in a more public forum and see where we get to with it.

So, if you or someone you know disagree with the article, then please come along (and invite them to do the same) and add your comments – anonymity is fine – let’s just have the discussion.