Shapiro Blasts Likely GOP Presidential Candidacy of Ex-HP CEO Fiorina

BSA, the IT Industry Council and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group were among the several tech groups we polled that by and large declined comment on news reports that ex-Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina will declare her candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination May 4. The exception was CEA President Gary Shapiro who, when asked his reaction to Fiorina's impending candidacy, emailed us to say he was "initially thrilled as she is from the tech industry, keynoted CES, is a woman and has immersed herself in great charitable endeavors." However, "my enthusiasm waned dramatically as she supports patent trolls and attacked the tech industry for taking on the cause of equal treatment of gays," Shapiro said. "Not wise for any candidate to attack his or her business roots." As HP CEO, Fiorina used her January 2004 CES keynote to describe the introduction of the HP Entertainment Hub as “the central repository and distribution engine for digital content throughout the entire home,” according to a transcript of her speech that's still posted on the HP website. Within five years after being ousted from HP in 2005 (see 0502100150), Fiorina turned more political and ran an unsuccessful campaign as the Republican nominee to unseat Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. (see 1011040069). In recent years, Fiorina has become an outspoken advocate of conservative causes and chairs the American Conservative Union Foundation. In that role, she took the podium at a March 4 patent reform symposium to blast the Innovation Act as a cure in search of a disease and as a measure that would bolster big companies at the expense of small innovators, according to a transcript posted at IPWatchdog.com. Said Fiorina: “If the Innovation Act were law tomorrow, Thomas Edison would be a Patent Troll. Really? Some of our greatest inventors would be Patent Trolls under this law. Our universities would be patent trolls. We are fixing problems that don’t exist. We are boiling the ocean.” As for Shapiro’s criticism that Fiorina attacked the tech industry for its support of gay rights, that’s a reference to her calling out Apple CEO Tim Cook as a hypocrite in an April 2 Wall Street Journal interview for criticizing Indiana's new Religious Freedom Restoration Act while his company does business in multiple countries that discriminate against their own citizens or are guilty of human rights abuses. In the wake of the uproar over the Indiana law, which Fiorina has defended, Shapiro was among the more than 100 tech leaders who signed their names to a statement urging legislators to add nondiscrimination protections for LGBT people to civil rights laws, the Human Rights Campaign said earlier this month (see 1504070059). Fiorina's representatives didn’t comment on Shapiro’s remarks.