Two years ago to the day, ip fray (as well as its sibling sites ai fray and games fray) launched. On the first day, there were two articles: a “hello world” type of introductory piece and a report on three Colombian preliminary injunctions.
Now, two years later, this is what the LinkedIn search result for ip fray says: 10K (rounded) followers. And there are so many heavy hitters among those 10K. ip fray articles have even given rise to court orders and hearings (see item 5 of this article).
There’s only a small number of patent-focused publications that have a five-figure number of LinkedIn followers. And they are between five and 20 years older than ip fray. Yet we add more new LinkedIn followers per month than any of the others does.
Now, this is what LinkedIn shows (at least in some geographies) when one searches for the Unified Patent Court: ip fray is at the start of the list of pages with an overlapping audience.
The UPC and standard-essential patents are obviously our two biggest topics. But that does not mean that we want to limit ourselves in any way:
- Next month we’ll be at the Patent Litigation Europe event in Amsterdam as the organizer’s official media partner. It is going to be a huge conference particularly for the pharma and life sciences patent litigation community. We wrote more about pharma and life sciences cases this year than last, and we plan to double down in 2026.
- I was personally interested in U.S. patent litigation (federal court and ITC cases) long before I attended any European patent trial. Last Thursday I analyzed a precedential Federal Circuit decision, and the day before I reported on a U.S. antisuit injunction.
- Emerging jurisdictions are very important to us, e.g., China (last Wednesday), Brazil (last Friday), India (earlier this month), and now even Africa (last Friday).
Our team continues to grow, enabling greater breadth while maintaining depth.
We have so far published only one guest article, and there may be more in 2026. It’s not that we don’t accept contributions. We just haven’t focused on it. If you think you have something our audience may be extremely interested in, please reach out.
A few months ago, we changed the rhythm of our follow.it emails (if you don’t know them: you can leave your email address here and you’ll receive emails informing you of new articles). Instead of sending out an email after every article, we now aggregate the material. Of course, sometimes there is breaking news big enough to warrant a dedicated email. But by and large we avoid to send out more than one email per day. Those follow.it emails are free to you, and in those emails we always make it clear which articles are free, premium, or a mix.
The percentage of premium content has increased in recent months, and that was part of the plan. The goal was to start the subscription offering even earlier, but we were too busy, which caused delays. We will still make a decent amount of content available for free in 2026. Sponsored content is always free. We want to keep ip fray attractive to those who are not prepared to pay, while ensuring that those who do become premium members will enjoy major advantages.
That’s our freemium model, and it’s off to a very good start. Our law firm directories for UPC Representatives as well as for SEP Litigators list only premium member firms (and their achievements). We have many corporate subscribers, with the Asian market even exceeding our expectations. The subscriber base is growing steadily.
We don’t engage in hardselling. That means we don’t send out many reminders, and only after long periods. We don’t do cold calls or email campaigns. We don’t invite to video conferences. Our focus is on making sure that what we have to offer is compelling, and on working it out with those who are interested. If patent litigation is key to your business, ask yourself where you get the greatest value. If you think it’s ip fray, great. If not, please let us know what we can improve.
Last Wednesday, we launched our law firm directories and achievement lists. In 2026, we will be adding new achievements to the list on a weekly or even almost daily basis. Every time we report on a new achievement by a member firm, we will try to add it to the firm profiles and the achievement lists as quickly as possible. We’ve already done so on a few occasions since the launch. In the beginning, we need law firms to submit their historic achievement lists. Some have yet to fill out the basic profile form, which is why you find firms in our directory who don’t have a profile yet. After the Holiday Season, there will be a lot of visible progress. Going forward, we can maintain those lists. And we plan to create additional lists in the future, such as for pharma/life sciences/medtech litigation. Also, as the lists grow, we may split them up by region.
Thank you for your support: sponsors, subscribers, all other readers, and everyone who provides us with relevant information. Happy Holidays!