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Former Google Lawyer Michelle Lee To Run US Patent Office
First time accepted submitter Tigger's Pet writes "The BBC report that 'Google's former top patent lawyer has been put in charge of America's patent and trademark office (USPTO). Michelle Lee was made deputy director of the USPTO this week and will run the agency while it seeks a new boss. Ms Lee joined the patent office after leaving Google in June 2012 but said the opinions of her former employer would not guide her work.' Maybe she will use her knowledge from some of the insanity she has seen to actually tackle the current situation of patents, patent-trolling and lawsuits, so that companies can concentrate on true development which benefits all their users, not just the lawyers."
"You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.
"In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend." -MARX & ENGELS, 1848
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Yes, she's going to use her experience to right what's wrong with the patent system. That's totally how the revolving door works.
"...but said the opinions of her former employer would not guide her work."
I wonder if she rolled her eyes and winked after saying this.
This is one of those situations where I think the chosen person could actually do an enormous amount of good if they had the will to, but I have little to no hope that that will be the actual outcome.
Summary is spot on: Obviously, patents exist "so that companies can concentrate on true development which benefits all their users". An individual with a patent? Yeah, right...
But said the opinions of her former employer would not guide her work.
Maybe she will use her knowledge from some of the insanity she has seen to actually tackle the current situation of patents, patent-trolling and lawsuits, so that companies can concentrate on true development which benefits all their users, not just the lawyers.
His response.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Well at least she might be able to teach the examiners how to google for prior art.
"Maybe she will use her knowledge from some of the insanity she has seen to actually tackle the current situation of patents..."
Really? You actually believe this? Please contact me so that we can begin our talks about me selling you a bridge.
I'd expect it to become swifter for "established" patent holders to get their patents approved, while individual patent holders get left out in the cold. It has been burdensome for professionals like her, and there may be some collateral benefit to smaller companies and individuals.
But the patent system is fundamentally overwhelmed and burdened, now, by software patents. Abandoning those would eliminate jobs for many patent lawyers, but would shorten time to market and free up developers to use well-known tools for which patents should _never_ have been granted. And it's become increasingly burdensome for international business to deal with patent law in different nations, also burdening American competitiveness.
"Maybe she will use her knowledge from some of the insanity she has seen to actually tackle the current situation of patents, patent-trolling and lawsuits, so that companies can concentrate on true development which benefits all their users, not just the lawyers."
Or maybe she will use her knowledge to simply reinforce the patent system so that holders of large patent portfolios with products in the market are just more immune from all patent challenges, not just trolling challenges.
Which would actually be a worse outcome, since at least the broken system seems to be allowing patent challenges, even though they appear to be cynically motivated.
It's not at all hard to see a trolling "fix" that simply denies challenges. It's easy to see some law getting passed that says "well, you may have a patent for X used in Company's Product Y, but because they have a working product an N other patents for the product, the product would exist anyway because your patent is only a small part of a larger entity."
And now you've eliminated trolling, but you've also made it so that big companies can just steal things from startups or smaller competitors.
Internal design:
(Receive form)
IF forms not filled out completely THEN reject immediately
ELSE IF Submitter is Google THEN move to acceptance queue
ELSE move to prior art search queue for processing by Google
In any case I don't see how this help limit patents. Google after all, IIRC, hold a patent for scanning personal data and targeting advertisement based on keywords. If there is an obvious patent, that would be it. The fact is that Google simply did not have the good sense, or maybe the creativity, to develop patents over time the way that many other companies have done over the past 100 years. It was mostly just in business to make money through the obscurity of it adsense software. Acknowledging it's mistakes, it overpaid for the Motorola portfolio.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
So you want to hire someone fresh out of law school who never worked for a company, or what?
Absolutely!!!!!!
They'd be idealistic and not jaded - corrupted. They would have the Constitution in their eyes and fight for freedom, justice and the American way! But ....
See, Lee has been in industry, she'll play around as an administrator and when done, make the REALLY big bucks! She'll make deals, slip things into regs that'll help past or future employers, learn the system, and well, fuck We the People.
It's the same old shit. Connected people getting high level Gov jobs to make even more money and get even more power down the road.
It's been that way before the Roman Senate.
Fuck the Poor!
-Mel Brooks; History of the World, Part 1
Remember Google's old motto, "Don't be evil"? You have the power to let "the little guy" write some popular software that takes off, without being crushed by software patent litigation.
Companies of Google's caliber can compete on their own merits with anyone - they don't need to hold software patents to succeed.
Don't be evil - do something amazing and reform the software patent system. It would be a glorious achievement. Most people in your position would line their pockets and cruise to retirement. It's your choice.
...all voted for this crap, you'll get what you deserve, and you'll like it. Did you really think president Goldman Sachs, would put someone neutral in charge of the Patent office? No, it's fascism all the way down with these people. Wake up.
This is rather like Monsanto, Tyson, Smithfield, etc people working for the USDA. There needs to be serious enforcement of the conflict of interest prevention.
Once a lawyer, always a lawyer.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
A technology is not obsolete if it's required for interoperating with the installed base.
The problem with you Tea Baggers is that you're shrill and can't take criticism without flipping out like narcissistic teenager.
I seriously doubt that Google being her previous employer/client will make any difference to how she runs the USPTO. My experience, admittedly in the UK, is that a lawyer will happily argue that the moon is made of green cheese without believing it in the slightest. And they'll keep on arguing it for just as long as the client has money to keep paying them.
Please look at the background of Ms. Lee.
I do not think that she is a bourgeois
http://www.asianpacificfund.org/board-members/michelle-k-lee
Michelle received her bachelor and master of science degrees in computer science and electrical engineering, both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her law degree from Stanford Law School.
Prior to law school, she worked as a computer science researcher at Hewlett Packard Company and the M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Upon graduating from Stanford, she clerked for Judge Vaughn Walker on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Thereafter, she clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C. for Judge Paul Michel.
This gal worked her way up the ladder, one step at a time.
On the application it talks about how false declarations can get you charged Federally. Alas, the "new normal" seems to be 'that was the least untruthful thing I could have said', so frauds and suspected frauds are allowed to skate. Perhaps the new head will actually care about applications that one can suspect are fraudulent.
The email address in this application used to be used by her Father who has a bit of a tax problem.
The application has a checkbox for 'if you are a lawyer' and that is unchecked. Comparing her record with the State Bar shows a different email address.
Alex, I'll take 'Regulatory Capture for $800'.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Not at all. They have to at least pretend to do their job. Let's say that absent economic incentives, the allowance rate would be 5%. In that case, 49.2% is almost ten times the rate and the USPTO is incredibly broken. They can be doing a horrible job due to perverse incentives without being 100% cronies. It's the same thing with police departments and their perverse incentives. They have incentives to write bullshit tickets and seize everything that they can, but cops do spent a lot of their time doing things other than that.
However, let's say that absent economic incentives, the allowance rate would be 95%. Then clearly, 49.2% represents an incredibly stingy allowance rate, and the USPTO is incredibly biased against patents.
See? Unsourced numbers can be pulled from your ass to support any conclusion with equal credibility, whether it's my 95% or your 5%... "equal" credibility still being "zero" credibility. On the other hand, actual numbers, specifically the 49.2% allowance rate and the 87.2% initial rejection rate, refute your unsupported conclusion.
From summary:
Maybe she will use her knowledge from some of the insanity she has seen to actually tackle the current situation of patents, patent-trolling and lawsuits, so that companies can concentrate on true development which benefits all their users, not just the lawyers.
Or maybe she won't
Your numbers refute nothing. The claim is that the way fees work creates a perverse incentive. You provide the allowance rate as evidence to the contrary, but those numbers are useless without context or a baseline. We know what the numbers are with the current incentives. We don't know how much they would differ if those incentives were neutralized. I wasn't saying that the allowance rate was 5%, but was instead giving an example to prove my point. In your hypothetical, that would be the case as well. In fact, it helps prove my point. We have no idea what the allowance rate would be if the fees were neutral, so your numbers lack context and are useless in this conversation. You keep spouting 'majority' as if that has any meaning here.
It's not unreasonable to draw suspicion on this practice, because the actual costs of maintenance are basically nothing. $7,500 for rubber stamping a continuation? That's quite fishy, and seems like it would be difficult to justify.
Also, your argument about initial rejections is based on poor reasoning in addition to not considering baseline measures. An initial rejection means that they get a little bit more for an amendment. The most profitable path might be to be milk out the application for as long as you can without facing a risk of an extension.
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Your numbers refute nothing.
Actually, they refute your logical conclusion by showing that its based on a false premise. Additionally, unlike your numbers, mine are based in reality. You have no real numbers period.
We know what the numbers are with the current incentives. We don't know how much they would differ if those incentives were neutralized.
Begging the question. I disagree that they're even "incentives", and my actual numbers show that they do not appear to be, since if anything, the USPTO has a greater incentive to reject applications and collect fees for RCEs and appeals.
Additionally:
It's not unreasonable to draw suspicion on this practice, because the actual costs of maintenance are basically nothing. $7,500 for rubber stamping a continuation? That's quite fishy, and seems like it would be difficult to justify.
You apparently have no idea what you're talking about. Maintenance fees have nothing to do with continuation applications. You are combining two things because you've heard the words in connection with patents and assume they must be related, even though you have no real clue what they mean.
And I realize that you're going to wave your hands and claim it was a typo, but you do the same thing here:
An initial rejection means that they get a little bit more for an amendment.
Amendments aren't charged a fee unless you add claims without canceling other claims. The USPTO doesn't simply get more money by virtue of initially rejecting an application. You really are just tossing out statements with no idea whether they're correct or not.
Examiners don't get paid more to allow an application than to reject it. So whatever institutional incentives you might believe are present, you'd need to show what incentives exist for examiners to allow - especially when continuing to reject and forcing applicant to file RCEs is definitively in the examiner's interest.
This guy, who has been waging the battle for a very long time, thinks this is a good appointment.
http://keionline.org/node/1853
Unfortunately people being people she will use her knowledge of Google's concerns and her prior connections with Google to advance their agenda. That's human nature. To claim it won't affect her decision making is naive.
The Fox is in charge of the hen house
Your numbers a real, but not meaningful to the conversation at hand. We know the numbers with our current incentives, but not the numbers in their absence. We can conclude that the USPTO is not completely ruled by those numbers, but we can't conclusively say whether or not they are influenced by them. I never claimed that my numbers were real. I just used them to illustrate how your numbers could be correct and the premise still be true.
Actually, that's pretty complicated math. You have to weigh the chances that an applicant will go for an RCE/appeal against the money lost by those who don't submit those. They also involve quite a bit more manpower than a rubber stamp for maintenance, so they might not be as profitable There is a complex risk and dynamics at play here, and humans are, generally speaking, pretty bad at gambling. That's actually a significant part of why patent trolls exist, despite a large number of even the most successful ones not making money. However, approving patents over denying them is a fairly simple game with a pretty reliable turnout.
No, I was using 'continuation as a way to explain that they simply collect money and stamp a form to not kill the patent. The patent's legal monoply would continue to exist My apologies on that one, IANAL, so sometimes I use common vernacular words without recalling that the term I used has a more specific legal definition.
I will attribute this to not intimately knowing the ins and outs of what fees are paid when. AFAIK, you have to file an amendment after an additional rejection, and there are listings of amendment fees on the fees page of the USPTO.
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