Lawyers and other commentators often remark that American courts, and American juries in particular, are prejudiced against large corporate entities. Existing empirical research attempting to confirm this suspicion is contradictory and suffers from a number of shortcomings. In this Article, Judge Moore reexamines the issue by reporting the results of research on an original dataset of over four thousand patent cases and more than one million patents. The results indicate that individuals and corporations are treated differently in jury trials of patent property rights. In jury trials of patent cases between corporations and individuals, individ-uals won 74% of the time, with corporations winning in the remaining 26% of cases. Corporations and individuals won at nearly equal rates in judge trials. Marshaling a range of other evidence, Judge Moore explains that these results are likely to understate the degree of bias.
Moreover, analysis of patent cases permits the exploration of a related phenomenon—the heroic iconization of the American inventor. Just as the injured tort victim is viewed sympathetically, the American inventor is idealized for her ingenuity, productivity, and creativity. The individual inventor puts a face on the corporate entity, humanizing or personalizing it. Hence, even corporation-versus-corporation litigation has an individual component and therefore provides an opportunity for bias to impact decisionmaking.
