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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.
"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
The summary actually isn't spot on, because Lee was appointed as the deputy director. She will be the "acting director" until the President appoints a new director and the Senate confirms him or her.
There is actually a concern that this appointment is not valid, because the law requires that the deputy director be appointed by the Secretary of Commerce after being nominated by the USPTO director. We don't actually have a USPTO director currently, so it's not clear from where the authority for this appointment is derived.
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.
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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.