(credit: Lex Machina)

Copyright lawsuits over online file-sharing have dropped significantly this year, according to data compiled by Lex Machina. Data released by the legal research company shows there were 249 file-sharing lawsuits filed in the second quarter of 2016, compared to 517 cases the previous year.

Anti-piracy copyright lawsuits began increasing in number dramatically around 2012 and last year constituted the majority of all copyright cases nationally. The number of copyright disputes unrelated to file-sharing have held steady for the last five years, as shown in the graph above.

Lex Machina defines file-sharing lawsuits as cases having “John Doe or anonymous defendants” and allegations related to file-sharing technology, typically BitTorrent.