Business Executives Ask Obama to Help Cut Costly Patent Lawsuits

The chief executives of Google, Cisco, Micron, Palm and 24 other executives have written to President Barack Obama urging support for patent reform now before congress that they hope would reduce expensive litigation.

Bills before the U.S. Congress would reduce damages for patent infringement, make it harder for plaintiffs to shop for a friendly court and change other elements of the patent system.

“Modernizing the U.S. patent system and stopping the abuses we see now will greatly enhance our efforts to innovate by creating U.S.-based jobs to help better lead our nation’s economic recovery,” the executives wrote in the letter dated March 23.

“The Patent Reform Act of 2009 would fuel American innovation and competitiveness by modernizing U.S. patent law, improving patent quality, and reducing unnecessary litigation,” they said in the letter.

The letter was released on Wednesday by the Coalition for Patent Fairness, a pro-patent reform trade group.

Among the executives who signed the letter were: Tom Adams of Rosetta Stone Inc, Steven Appleton of Micron Technology Inc, Jim Balsillie of Research In Motion, Carl Bass of Autodesk, Safra Catz of Oracle, John Chambers of Cisco, Ed Colligan of Palm, Michael Dell of Dell, Mark Hurd of Hewlett-Packard, Shantanu Narayen of Adobe Systems Inc, Paul Otellini of Intel Corp, Eric Schmidt of Google Inc and Brad Smith of Intuit.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz)