Community Spotlight:  Nicole Clark,  Co-Founder and CEO, Trellis

The changing landscape of patent litigation in Delaware’s federal court is being driven by Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly’s standing order requiring the disclosure of third-party funding involved in these lawsuits. That is according to research conducted by Jonas Anderson, a professor at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law, which studied third-party litigation funding in Delaware and New Jersey. 

An article in Bloomberg Law examines the paper, ‘From Patents To Guns: Examining Third-Party Litigation Funding’, which found that in the two years following Judge Connolly's standing order from April 2022, the number of patent cases filed has totaled 1,121. This is a significant drop from the previous two-year period, which saw 1,899 patent lawsuits filed in the Delaware court. Similarly, in the New Jersey district court that also requires disclosure, Anderson found that since June 2021, only 88 cases out of 40,000 had disclosed that they were backed by third-party funding. 

Commenting on his findings, Anderson said that “from the evidence we’ve amassed, there’s a pretty good argument here that what’s going on is litigation funders don’t like disclosure.” He also noted that the result of this drop in cases being filed in Delaware resulted in an inverse rise in the number of patent suits filed in two district courts in Texas where there is no mandatory disclosure requirement for outside funding.

Michael Gulliford, managing partner and co-founder at litigation funder Soryn IP Capital Management, suggested that one of the reasons for a drop in the volume of cases in Delaware could be the court’s backlog of processing these suits. Gulliford explained that “the ability to get to trial in a speedy period of time” is a priority for funders, and that court backlogs in Delaware and other jurisdictions could pose a significant obstacle for litigation funders. William Marra, director at Certum Group, said that Anderson’s research supported his first-hand experience that “only a very small percentage of cases” are backed by litigation funders.

The full research and paper from Mr Anderson can be found here.

A new class action in the Federal Court of Australia is targeting General Motors Australia and New Zealand over the alleged sale of Holden vehicles with faulty transmissions. The class action is being brought on behalf of consumers who purchased certain models of Holden vehicles between 1 January 2011 and 24 December 2024.

Reporting by 9News covers the class action, which is being led by Maurice Blackburn. Balance Legal Capital is providing litigation funding for the claim. The vehicles allegedly affected include a range of 13 models that were equipped with GM 6L 45, GM 6L 50, or GM 6L 80 transmissions. The claim alleges that General Motors engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct in the sale of these vehicles, and that it failed to meet the guarantee of acceptable quality under the Australian Consumer Law.

Kimi Nishimura, principal lawyer and executive director at Maurice Blackburn, stated: “Through this class action, we are seeking to recover compensation for those consumers who experienced loss and damage related to the transmission system in the affected vehicles.”

In response to the reporting, General Motors Australia and New Zealand did not provide a comment on the class action, with a spokesperson reiterating that “GM does not comment on ongoing litigation.”

Detailed information on the Holden Transmission Class Action can be found on Maurice Blackburn’s website.