As we start our Christmas and New Year break, here are the most-read IAM blog stories of 2015

It’s Christmas time and the IAM blog is taking its annual winter break. We’ve had an exciting year with so much happening in various parts of the world to keep our team in London, Hong Kong and Washington DC busy. A quick look at our Google analytics stats shows that this year we have had 116,142 unique users, who between them visited us on 216,477 occasions. The average length of each visit was 1 minute and 30 seconds.

In terms of the countries from which we get most visitors, in order they are: (1) the US, (2) the UK, (3) Germany, (4) Canada, (5) India, (6) Japan, (7) the Netherlands, (8) South Korea, (9) France, (10) China. The cities where most of our readers are based are: (1) New York, (2) London, (3) San Francisco, (4) Washington DC, (5) Chicago, (6) Munich, (7) Los Angeles, (8) Ottawa, (9) Seoul, (10) Alexandria. All of which tells you that well over 50% of our readers are based in the US. Gratifyingly, though, we are seeing a lot more interest from both Asia and Europe. As the IP market develops and internationalises that trend will no doubt continue into the new year.

We posted hundreds of stories over the year, but the 20 most read were, in descending order:

1. Beware the IP non-assert clause in AWS cloud service agreement, warns ex-Microsoft patent chief

2. The 40 individuals who drive the global patent market named in the latest issue of IAM

3. “Thank you Tesla for opening up your patents”: the Chinese company that might test Elon Musk’s IP views

4. Ericsson and Nokia the latest to confirm that they will not license under the new IEEE patent policy

5. An SEP licensing system with no rules has no future, says IEEE Standards Board executive

6. Patent law changes in US mean there are potentially billions of dollars of write-downs on public company balance sheets, says Spangenberg

7. IPXI demise caused by a US patent system that offers no incentive for good-faith licensing, says exchange's CEO

8. The Kyle Bass pharma patent IPR strategy looks to be a lot more sophisticated and long-term than many think

9. BlackBerry's deal with Cisco could mark the Canadian company's coming of age as a big patent licensor

10. The trend is clear – patent litigation rates in the US are on the decline

11. Big names among those laid off from Alcatel-Lucent's IP group

12. The companies that abandon most US and EPO patents – and shoulder much responsibility for raising quality

13. The Microsoft patent portfolio: 40,000+ active patents; China biggest jurisdiction after US; 15% of total acquired

14. Pilot project with Microsoft and other big filers will directly help SMEs, not hinder them, says EPO

15. New court filings throw light on ZTE’s “PR battle” with Vringo

16. The US may not have a world class patent system, but its professionals are second to none

17. South Korean banks join forces to launch NPE with initial reserves of $89 million to spend

18. The PPP may be great news for Google, but less good for the blood pressures of its patent team members

19. No ifs, no buts - it is time to shine a bright and permanent light on the full workings of the EPO

20. Spangenberg on latest big pharma filing: “This tells me I’m on to something important”

We’ll be back on 4^th January when we name the first of our IP personalities of 2015, with the second part following on 5^th January.

Here’s wishing each and every one of our readers a very merry Christmas and a happy, successful New Year.