Patent Litigation Down in 2005

I was just reading Bill Heinze's I/P Updates Weekly edition and found the following item on the drop in patent infringement litigation of interest:

According to a January 5, 2006 press release from LegalMetric, litigation tools provider, the number of new patent infringement cases in the U.S. dropped 10 percent in 2005 for the first time in ten years. In contrast, the number of lawsuits per issued patent has been in decline since 1997. Still, the decline seems to be specific to patent cases. LegalMetric reports that the number of trademark cases continued to increase from 2004 to 2005.