Palm to Support Patent Reform 7

Well, we're not entirely sure what to make of this, but Palm's Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Mary E. Doyle, has just put up a post at the Official Palm Blog entitled "Innovation in a Changing World."  The upshot?  Palm is backing the Patent Reform Act of 2009 along with the Coalition for Patent Fairness.  Palm's stated goal, from the post, is that:

[...] worthy inventions will be patented expeditiously and compensated fairly while at the same time pioneering innovators will have the freedom to invest in new products without the threat of opportunistic litigation and disproportionate damages awards.

Palm has certain been relatively coy about the ongoing question of whether or not they're going to face a patent dispute with Apple and what they'd do in such a situation.  The upshot is that they're confident in their patents and the advantage these patents give the company should litigation arise.  

Of course, the other partners in this coalition include Google, ROM, Dell, HP, Microsoft, and, yes, Apple.  So it's probably best not to take this as some sort of salvo in the potential patent pugilism except insofar as to say that Palm isn't really fond of the patent system as it currently stands and neither, apparently, is Apple.