Obama calls for patent reform in address

In his annual State of the Union address, delivered on Tuesday, US president Barack Obama said he would pass a patent reform bill that “allows ... businesses to stay focused on innovation, not costly, needless litigation”.

The White House later released a document outlining the president’s key executive actions for 2014, and elaborated on his pledge to reform patent law in a passage headed “Protecting American Innovation from Patent Trolls”.

In recent years, the US patent system has seen an “explosion of abusive patent litigation designed not to reward innovation but to threaten companies based on questionable claims”, the document said.

Patent trolls cost the economy billions of dollars and undermine American innovation, it continued.

Last February, Obama challenged the administration and Congress to take on the issue, and in June announced five executive actions and seven legislative recommendations designed to protect innovators from frivolous lawsuits launched against them.

With his address, Obama has renewed his call for Congress to pass patent legislation, which has had “strong bipartisan support”, the document said.

Todd Dickinson, executive director of the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), said of Obama’s address: “The fact that the president mentioned patent reform in the State of the Union address demonstrates the critical importance of the patent system to innovation and to our economy.

“AIPLA believes any legislation that fixes abuses to the system is a good thing. We are also committed to getting it right for all America’s inventors.”

Obama will announce progress on the initiatives on patent reform in the “coming weeks”.