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"FORTUNE &amp;#8212; In a gesture that is most remarkable for the fact that\u00A0someone thought it\u00A0necessary at all, a diverse group of seven major corporations joined forces this morning\u00A0to say little more than, basically: Patents are good.\nThe group, which calls itself the Partnership for American Innovation, hopes to stem what their members see as overblown negativity and hostility toward the patent system in the media, Congress, and the courts.\nThe group\u2019s charter members are Apple (AAPL), DuPont (DD), Ford (F), General Electric\u00A0(GE), IBM (IBM), Microsoft (MSFT), and Pfizer (PFE), and its \u201Csenior advisor\u201D is Dave Kappos, the former director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, who is now a partner with the law firm of Cravath, Swaine &amp;amp; Moore. The group expects additional\u00A0members to be enlisting in the days ahead, according to a spokesperson.\n\u201CWe must move beyond rhetoric that \u2018the system is broken and trolls are bringing businesses to a complete halt,\u2019\u201D Kappos says in a press release, \u201Cto a discussion of calibrated improvements for what is actually the best patent system our planet has.&amp;#8221;\nMORE: Are lobbyists the biggest losers post-McCutcheon?\nThe group\u2019s message is astoundingly basic, and not tied to support for, or opposition to, any particular patent reform bill now pending in Congress or to any one issue now being weighed\u00A0by the U.S. Supreme Court. The group\u2019s members merely endorse three broad principles:\n\n\u201C(1) The American economy is best served by a strong patent system that protects high-quality innovation in all fields of technology;\n(2) It is critical to our global economy that IP is respected by all participants in the system; and\n(3) The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office must be properly funded to efficiently and effectively process patent applications and issue only high-quality patents.\u201D\n\nThough the formation of the group is tied to no topical hook, it does arrive tellingly just three days after oral argument in \n  Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International\n, a U.S. Supreme Court case that poses the fundamental question of whether computer-implemented inventions like software are patentable at all.\nIn an interview with Kappos, the most specific information I could wheedle out of him was that the new group\u2019s members all apparently agree that software is certainly patentable.\n\u201CHow is it cars can parallel park themselves today?\u201D he asks, rhetorically. \u201CIs it the sensors? Is it the cameras? No. Those existed before. It\u2019s the software.\u201D\nMORE:\u00A0Could this be Armageddon for shareholder class actions?\n\u201CIn the view of the partnership,\u201D he continues, \u201Cgreat innovation should be protected. Full stop. Software; firmware; biotech-related; physical sciences; pharmaceuticals: Great innovation is great innovation, and needs to be strongly incentivized and protected.\u201D\nIn contrast, in the Alice case, a number of younger Silicon Valley companies, including LinkedIn (LNKD), Netflix (NFLX), Rackspace (RAX), Trulia (TRLA), and Twitter (TWTR), urged the Court that \u201Csoftware patents do not serve the Constitutional purpose of the patent system.\u201D In their brief, authored by Stanford Law School intellectual property scholar Mark Lemley, the companies argued: \u201CWe create innovative software because of our desire to delight our customers and despite, not because of the patent system &amp;#8230; Innovation happens despite software patents, not because of them.\u201D\nToday\u2019s formation of the Partnership, then, may reflect a frustration comparable to that expressed in IBM\u2019s amicus brief in the CLS Bank case, which began with this cri de coeur: \u201CSoftware is not a new technology. It has been around in various forms for well over half a century. During that time it has become one of the fundamental building blocks of innovation and technological advancement, and a critical part of our nation\u2019s economy. Software is the medium for innovation in every field, from automobile manufacturing to medicine. The fact that the Court is now &amp;#8212; in 2014 &amp;#8212; actively considering such a basic question as whether computer-implemented inventions such as software are even eligible for patent protection is deeply troubling.\u201D (IBM\u2019s attorneys were led by Paul Clement of the Bancroft law firm.)"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://fortune.com/2014/04/03/patents-are-good-say-seven-big-companies/>