New Patent Office Director Will Advocate For Less Litigation

WASHINGTON -- Michelle K. Lee has been confirmed as the new director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. As Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director of the USPTO, Lee had been acting director for more than a year.

Lee previously served as deputy general counsel for Google, where she was in charge of patents and related strategies. Prior to becoming a lawyer, Lee was a computer scientist at HP Labs and MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab.

An advocate for patent reform, her appointment may resonate within the manufacturing sectors of the vending, jukebox and amusement communities, where patent litigation has sometimes stifled product development. Lee has repeatedly criticized the high cost of patent litigation.

In a speech at the Stanford Law School in June, she spoke out against the costs associated with litigation and its negative impact on innovation. "And if there is a bug in our system, I think it ought to be fixed. So when patent rights are used not to help bring new products to the market, but rather to extract 'cost of litigation' settlements from companies and end-users inexperienced in the ways of our patent system, the careful balance of costs and benefits underlying our patent system is threatened," she said.

"In these circumstances," Lee continued, "patents are not being used to 'promote the progress of Science and useful Arts,' as intended by our Constitution and founding fathers, and it imposes the costs of a monopoly on society, without any greater benefits."