Ask why anyone pays a patent troll to license a patent that probably wouldn't survive a serious challenge, and you always arrive at the same answer: because fighting costs more than paying. That answer isn't a hunch. The American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) has measured the cost of patent litigation every two years for decades, and the numbers are stark enough that the entire troll business model is built on top of them.
This is what defending a patent suit actually costs, according to the AIPLA Report of the Economic Survey — by stage, by amount at risk, with the non-practicing entity defense figures broken out separately, and tracked over a decade so you can see where it's heading.
Where the numbers come from
The AIPLA Report of the Economic Survey is the most-cited source for IP litigation costs in the United States — courts quote it in fee-award opinions, and corporate legal departments use it to budget. It's prepared every other year for AIPLA's Law Practice Management Committee by an independent survey firm (Association Research, Inc.), based on responses from hundreds of IP attorneys and in-house counsel.
A few methodology points matter for reading the tables below:
- "Total cost" means everything. Respondents report outside legal and paralegal fees, local counsel, court reporters, photocopies, travel, exhibit prep, analytical testing, expert witnesses, translators, jury consultants — the whole bill, not just the lead firm's invoice.
- Per single patent. Estimates are for one patent at issue, so a multi-patent campaign costs more.
- By amount at risk. Costs are bucketed by how much money is in controversy — under $1M, $1M-$10M, $10M-$25M, and more than $25M — because a bet-the-company case is litigated very differently from a nuisance suit.
- Medians, from people who were actually there. Participants only report litigation types they handled recently, as a service provider or a purchaser. The headline figures are medians; the mean (average) runs higher because a handful of brutal cases pull it up.
The most recent edition is the 2025 Report, released February 2026; its full cost tables are available to AIPLA members (or as a paid digital copy). The most recent figures that are publicly documented in detail come from the 2023 Report (covering 2022 data), and that's what the tables below use, with the historical series running back through 2014. The 2025 edition continues the same series and the same methodology — when you can get to it, it's the authoritative current number.
The headline: what a patent suit costs
Here's the median total cost of a patent infringement suit, "all varieties," per patent — both through the end of discovery and claim construction (the Markman stage), and all the way through trial and appeal:
| Amount at risk | Through discovery & claim construction | Through trial & appeal |
|---|---|---|
| Less than $1M | $300,000 | $600,000 |
| $1M - $10M | $600,000 | $1,000,000 |
| $10M - $25M | $1,500,000 | $3,000,000 |
| More than $25M | $1,500,000 | $3,625,000 |
Source: AIPLA Report of the Economic Survey 2023, median total litigation cost, 2022 data.
Two things jump out. First, even the cheapest category — a sub-$1M dispute, taken only as far as claim construction — has a median cost of $300,000. You can spend a third of a million dollars and still not have reached trial. Second, these are medians; the survey's mean total costs run higher still (for the largest cases, the average through trial is roughly $4.4M), because the worst cases are very bad.
The often-quoted "patent litigation costs $3 million or more" figure is real, but it's specifically the high-stakes number — the median for cases with $10M+ at risk. A garden-variety troll suit usually sits in a lower tier, which is exactly why it lands where it does.
The number that matters for troll defense
Most troll suits aren't bet-the-company cases. They're calibrated to the $1M-$10M-at-risk zone — large enough to justify a real demand, small enough that you'll think hard about settling. So the AIPLA survey breaks out a category just for them: defending claims of patent infringement brought by a non-practicing entity.
| Amount at risk | Through discovery & claim construction | Through trial & appeal |
|---|---|---|
| Less than $1M | $325,000 | $750,000 |
| $1M - $10M | $800,000 | $1,500,000 |
| $10M - $25M | $1,450,000 | $3,200,000 |
| More than $25M | $2,000,000 | $3,875,000 |
Source: AIPLA Report of the Economic Survey 2023, "Defending Claims of Patent Infringement by Non-Practicing Entity," median total cost, 2022 data.
Read the $1M-$10M row, because that's where most demand letters live. Defending an NPE suit in that band runs a median of $800,000 just to get through claim construction, and $1.5M through trial. Notice it's higher than the all-varieties average at the same stage — NPE cases tend to involve broad, contested claim language, so the Markman fight (where the case is often won or lost) is expensive.
Now put that next to a typical troll demand of $50,000-$500,000. The demand isn't a guess. It's priced to sit comfortably below your $800K cost of merely reaching the point where you'd find out whether the patent is any good.
The asymmetry, in one diagram
flowchart LR
A["Troll files complaint<br/>~$400 court fee<br/>+ thin claim chart"] --> B["You must answer"]
B --> C["Discovery + Markman<br/>median $800k (NPE, $1-10M)"]
C --> D{"Settlement<br/>offered below<br/>your sunk + future cost"}
D -->|"Pay"| E["Troll profits;<br/>campaign rolls to<br/>the next target"]
D -->|"Fight on"| F["Trial<br/>median $1.5M+ (NPE)"]
style A fill:#fff7ed,stroke:#c2410c,color:#1c1917
style E fill:#d1fae5,stroke:#047857,color:#1c1917
style F fill:#fee2e2,stroke:#be123c,color:#1c1917
Filing a federal patent complaint costs the plaintiff a court filing fee of a few hundred dollars plus the attorney time to draft it — and for a troll running a volume campaign, the marginal cost of adding one more defendant to the wave is almost nothing. Your cost to make the suit go away on the merits is six or seven figures. That ratio — trivial to inflict, ruinous to defend — is the leverage. The patent's actual quality barely enters into it.
Has it gotten better? The decade trend
You'd hope that a wave of patent reform — the America Invents Act, Alice, TC Heartland, fee-shifting under Octane Fitness — would have driven litigation costs down. Here's the median total cost through trial and appeal, "all varieties," over the last decade ($000s):
| Amount at risk | 2014 | 2016 | 2018 | 2020 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Less than $1M | $600 | $500 | $700 | $675 | $600 |
| $1M - $10M | $2,000 | $1,000 | $1,500 | $1,000 | $1,000 |
| $10M - $25M | $3,100 | $2,000 | $2,700 | $3,000 | $3,000 |
| More than $25M | $5,000 | $3,000 | $4,000 | $4,000 | $3,625 |
Source: AIPLA Report of the Economic Survey 2023, median total cost through trial & appeal, all varieties.
The story isn't a steady decline — it's a plateau. After dropping from the 2014 highs (the era right before Alice and the AIA review process fully bit), costs stabilized and have basically moved sideways for a decade. Defending a serious patent suit still costs millions. The reforms changed which patents survive and gave defendants new tools — they did not make litigation cheap. The asymmetry is structural, and it's still here.
The cheaper path: challenge the patent at the PTAB
The single biggest lever a defendant has against that cost curve is to stop fighting in district court and attack the patent's validity directly, at the USPTO's Patent Trial and Appeal Board, through inter partes review. The AIPLA survey prices that route too:
| PTAB stage | Electrical / Computer | Mechanical | Life Sciences |
|---|---|---|---|
| Through filing the petition | $150,000 | $100,000 | $200,000 |
| Through end of motion practice | $250,000 | $250,000 | $400,000 |
| Through PTAB hearing | $350,000 | $350,000 | $600,000 |
| Through appeal | $500,000 | $500,000 | $800,000 |
Source: AIPLA Report of the Economic Survey 2023, PGR/IPR estimated cost by stage, 2022 data.
A full IPR through the PTAB hearing — the point at which most challenged claims live or die — runs a median of $350,000 for an electrical/software patent. Compare that to $1.5M+ to defend the same patent through trial. If the prior art is real, an IPR can end the entire matter for a fraction of the litigation cost, and it can be split across co-defendants to cut each party's share to a fraction again. The full economics, including when an IPR doesn't pay, are in Cost of inter partes review.
What this means if you've been sued
The cost numbers aren't just trivia — they're the map of your leverage:
- The demand is calibrated, not random. A troll's settlement number is set to sit just below what defense would cost a company your size. Recognizing that is the first step to not negotiating against yourself. See the anatomy of a shakedown.
- Claim construction is the expensive cliff. The jump from "answer the complaint" to "through Markman" is where most of the early money goes. Cases that can be resolved before that cliff — on a clean non-infringement read or an early IPR — cost dramatically less.
- Coordinated defense breaks the math. The troll's model assumes uncoordinated defendants each making an independent settle-or-fight decision. A joint defense group that shares one invalidity workup or one IPR turns a $400K-per-defendant problem into a $100K-per-defendant problem.
- Fee-shifting changes the troll's expected value. A credible threat under 35 U.S.C. § 285 puts the troll's own cost curve in play for the first time.
- A pre-built invalidity dossier collapses the early spend. Most of the first $300K-$800K of defense is prior-art research and claim analysis. When that work already exists, you start far down the cost curve. That's the whole point of this database — if your patent is already covered, the §102 / §103 skeleton is waiting.
Bottom line
The AIPLA Report of the Economic Survey turns the patent-troll problem into arithmetic. Defending a patent suit costs a median of $600K to $3.6M depending on what's at stake; defending an NPE suit in the typical demand-letter range costs a median of $800K through claim construction and $1.5M through trial; and a decade of reform has held those costs roughly flat rather than knocking them down. Filing the suit, meanwhile, costs the plaintiff a few hundred dollars and a form.
That gap is not an accident of the system. It is the system the troll is exploiting. Every defensive move that matters — early IPR, joint defense, fee-shifting, pre-built invalidity — is ultimately a way of attacking the one number the troll is counting on: the cost of proving a bad patent is bad.
Sources and method
All dollar figures are medians from the AIPLA Report of the Economic Survey (American Intellectual Property Law Association), prepared by Association Research, Inc. Litigation-cost figures and the PGR/IPR figures are from the 2023 Report (2022 survey data), which is the most recent edition whose detailed cost tables are publicly documented; the decade trend uses the same report's 2014-2022 series. The 2025 Report (released February 2026) continues the series; its full tables are available to AIPLA members and as a paid digital copy at aipla.org. Always verify against the current edition before relying on a specific figure for budgeting.
This article is for general education and is not legal advice.