Copyright Litigation in the Seventh Circuit: Pilot Study Report and Consultation Wednesday December 5 th :30 pm © Matthew Sag 2012 All Rights Reserved. Slides available at

Team Matthew Sag Associate Professor, Loyola University of Chicago School of Law Robert Strodtman Loyola University of Chicago, School of Law, Class of 2014 Aaron M. Arce Stark Loyola University of Chicago, School of Law, Class of 2013

District Court Copyright Cases in 7 th Cir 2011

Each case has several pages

Most cases don’t make it to Judgment Total Filings = 1780 About 160 in 2011

A single docket

Our Approach Use a combination of human and machine reading to turn hundreds of cases and thousands of dockets into data for high level analysis.

Your Role Does what we have done so far make sense? As we expand to a multi-year study, what else would you like to see?

An Empirical Study of Copyright Litigation Long-term Scope – All docketed copyright cases in the 7 th Circuit (2000 – 2013) – All reported orders and opinions Current Scope – All reported copyright opinions calendar year 2011 (n=56) and their associated docket information (n=43). Methods – combination of automated, semi-automated and human coding. Sources – Case reports on Lexis – Docket extracted from PACER

Filing to Termination

Filing to Termination ( )

Filing by District

The 2011 Data

2011: Duration of Reported Cases

Digging into the Dockets

Distribution by Judge

Plaintiff Work = Defendant Work in almost all cases

Case Types

DeniedGrantedMixedTotal Summary judgment (P)1214 J. as a Matter of Law0314 Motion to dismiss58215 SuaSponte dismissal22 Default Judgment0303 Motion to set aside1 Preliminary Injunction3306 Discovery Motion (P)1304 Discovery Motion (D)1001 Fees (P)0101 Fees (D)0101

The Impact of Pornography 27% of litigated cases copyright cases decided in the 7 th Circuit in 2011 were porn related

All Pornography cases were John Doe Suits

QUESTIONS & COMMENTS