United for Patent Reform Coalition Formed by NRF to Wage 'All-Out' Fight Against 'Patent Trolls'

The National Retail Federation is starting United for Patent Reform, which will seek via legislation to reduce abusive patent litigation, NRF said in a news release Thursday. NRF and Oracle are the coalition’s co-chairs, and its members include Adobe, Google and retail and housing associations, it said. “Patent trolls have abused our patent system with their coercive bribery schemes for far too long,” said David French, NRF senior vice president-government relations. “Main Street businesses and our allies in Silicon Valley have had enough and are fighting back in an all-out effort against patent trolls.” Public Knowledge cheered the coalition’s launch, in a news release. “The diversity of members of United for Patent Reform proves what we already knew: that patent reform is important for everyone who uses technology, from Silicon Valley companies to Main Street businesses to individual consumers,” Charles Duan, PK Patent Reform Project director, said. The coalition also sent a letter to the Senate and House Judiciary committees’ leadership, seeking seven legislative patent reforms. Those included stopping “discovery abuses” and forcing those who allege patent infringements to “explain their claims." House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte’s, R-Va., Innovation Act (HR-3309) could have done “even more to prevent abusive patent litigation,” but the bill was an “excellent start to the legislative reform effort,” it said. Goodlatte said in a speech Wednesday that he plans to work with the Senate in the 114th Congress to pass HR-3309 quickly (see 1501140031). The bill overwhelmingly passed the House last year. Other members of the coalition are Amazon, Cisco, Dell, Facebook, the Food Marketing Institute, Intuit, JCPenney, Macy's, the National Association of Chain Restaurants, the National Association of Convenience Stores, Salesforce.com, SAS and Verizon, the group said. There are "several others who are still in the process of joining at this date of announcement," it said. At CEA, which has made patent reform one of its highest legislative priorities (see 1411050022), Michael Petricone, senior vice president-government affairs, said in an emailed statement Thursday that "the breadth of the coalition shows that bogus patent lawsuits are not just a tech issue." As CEA sees it, "patent trolls extort and bedevil industries ranging from retailers to restaurants, from hotels to health care," Petricone said. "Patent abuse is a daily, costly challenge for a large swath of the U.S. economy, and that is why we fully expect sensible, common sense patent reform to be signed into law in 2015.”