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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."
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...
"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.
The biggest problem right now is that the USPTO is being paid for the amount of patents that is approved, as opposed to being paid for the amount of patents that are turned down (due to prior art, etc.)
It is a bit like paying fishermen for the amount of fish they *didn't* catch.
If she would accept this change in financial dependence, then I'd say there is hope. But right now I don't see it happening.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Huh, I didn't realize that. Looks like, for large companies at least (there are some discounts for individual inventors), the fees break down roughly like this:
So basically the USPTO gets $1600 if the patent is rejected, or $15,980 if it's approved.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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
No. Most of our votes don't mean shit thanks to Gerrymandering.
Educate yourself, fool.
Huh, I didn't realize that. Looks like, for large companies at least (there are some discounts for individual inventors), the fees break down roughly like this:
So basically the USPTO gets $1600 if the patent is rejected, or $15,980 if it's approved.
... the latter of which are over the course of 12 years. Plus, that's only if the patent is maintained for its full term, and not many are, particularly in the computing industry. Why pay $16k in maintenance fees on a patent on a technology that's obsolete?
Being obsolete doesn't mean that the patent isn't useful. If you manage to dupe the USPTO into granting you are patent on a necessary piece (or one that has become so commonplace to be necessary for interoperability reasons), you can ambush most anybody in the field. A good example would be the FAT filesystem. It wasn't a particularly great filesystem, and there are certainly better choices for anything you would do, ignoring the infrastructure. However, in reality, it is a virtual necessity to use either it or NTFS on any portable device that will be communicating with a desktop due to the dominant role of Microsoft there. There are plenty of operating systems that would make a great substitute if MS supported filesystems that they didn't create (with minor exceptions for things like ISO 9660.
You also don't seem to be understanding the criticism. The USPTO gets paid as much or more for accepting a patent than they do for rejecting it. Now, not all patents will be taken to full term, but more than zero of them will be. Therefore, the USPTO has incentives to approve patents.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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.
Being obsolete doesn't mean that the patent isn't useful. If you manage to dupe the USPTO into granting you are patent on a necessary piece (or one that has become so commonplace to be necessary for interoperability reasons), you can ambush most anybody in the field.
Yes, but the conclusion that the USPTO makes the majority of their fees post-grant relies on the premise that the majority of these patents have maintenance fees paid. And, as you note, that relies on a premise that a majority are "commonplace" that are used to "ambush" people. However, the premise is false.
You also don't seem to be understanding the criticism. The USPTO gets paid as much or more for accepting a patent than they do for rejecting it.
No, I understand the criticism. I'm merely pointing out that it's based on a false conclusion from an erroneous premise. In reality, not only are the majority of patents abandoned during their lifetime, before many of those maintenance fees are paid, the original argument disregarded all of the other fees paid to the USPTO, including fees for Requests for Continued Examination (which increase drastically after the first one), appeal fees, petition fees, etc., and those are all fees that are only paid when the USPTO rejects an application.
Now, what is the actual average cost to obtain a patent in fees to the USPTO vs. what is the actual average cost paid for issuance and maintenance? I don't know, and it would take a lot of data mining to find out (albeit from publicly available information), but I can tell you that if you start by ignoring the majority of the fees, your conclusion is based on fluff and dreams.
Furthermore, the evidence points to your conclusion being wrong. From here, the allowance rate is 49.2% including RCEs, or 68.5% not including them, depending on whether you consider an RCE to be a new application or not (for our purposes, discussing fees, it's somewhat irrelevant). If the USPTO had such great incentives to allow these cases, wouldn't that be 90% or higher?
In fact, to maximize their fees, wouldn't the USPTO want to allow all cases immediately? But instead (from the same page, scroll down), you find that 87.2% of applications are initially rejected. It's almost the opposite of the rubber stamp that your argument would suggest.
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.