Former Google Lawyer Michelle Lee To Run US Patent Office 91
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."
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While it's true that Communism has the same relationship to communism that the Libertarian Party has to libertarianism, and that Marxism is something yet again different (and never, ever, tried...probably impossible to try), the distinction that you are making between economics and politics is an illusion.
It is true that there are some elements in economics that are based on physical reality. They are a small minority of the elements on which there is ANY disagreement between, say, Marx and Keyes. Or even
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This is simply wrong.
Communism is indeed an economic system, like capitalism.
The political system you seem to equate with communism is totalitarianism, but that is a direct result of propaganda, much like the joining of capitalism with democracy in the heads of most people.
We've seen a lot of totalitarian communism throughout history, as well as some democratic capitalism, but instead of experimenting with democratic communism we seem to be heading full steam in the direction of totalitarian capitalism (su
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All politicians are economists. They are in charge of making sure the economy is balanced, the public funds are spent correctly, and that any service the government runs is quantified in financial terms.
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You're joking. Right?
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Total expropriation requires killing all who resist and taking their property by force, so that's been done.
The end result of building those mechanisms for expropriation is that they redirect the path to personal security and self-advancement from capitalist property acquisition to outright power aquisition. They also require exceptionally ruthless people (yes, kids, worse than CEOs) so that is who rises to power after Communist revolts. The Bolshevik is better adapted for survival than the Menshevik so th
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I don't understand why expropriation requires more killing then the status quo. Just pass a law to do it and suddenly every bank account and share belongs to the government. That's 99% of the work done already.
Are you serious? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Are you serious? (Score:5, Funny)
What are you saying?
The US gov't has a long history of hiring/appointing people from industry to work in order to improve the system. It works every time.
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Really. (Score:5, Funny)
"...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.
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She will be working in the Obama administration. I assure you she will be a crony corporatist puppet.
Re:Really. (Score:4, Insightful)
She will be working in the Obama administration. I assure you she will be a crony corporatist puppet.
You tell''em!
Back in the days of the Bush Administration, we NEVER had to worry about Crony Capitalism! Why Dick Cheney HIMSELF made sure that Afgan and Iraq wars were supplied by the most transparent and competitively bid government contracts EVER!
I miss Bush! With the economy the way it is, it's obvious that we need more wars to boost the economy. Fuck it! Let's invade Syria AND Iran!
After all, there are MILLIONS of unemployed young people in this country and what better purpose for them than to die for a bogu...necessary war to fight for Freedom!
Freedom isn't Free - ya know!
Re:Really. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Bush being a crony corporatist doesn't mean Obama isn't also a crony corporatist. In fact, if they have an (R) or a (D) in front of their name, they are probably a crony corporatist.
Spoken like a true Ayn Rand Paul Coo Coo Nut. .
How's the tea? A bit bitter?
Every socialist or anarchist or even "progressive democrat" I know would say the exact same thing regarding the major parties being corporatist. In fact, the main problem we all have with the Libertarian (as in the party, not the concept) or "Tea Party" types is that they're the only ones we can find who would argue AGAINST this concept! Although even many of them will take this corruption as a given -- they just consider it to be beneficial for some twisted reason...
Re:Really. (Score:4, Insightful)
OK (Score:2, Insightful)
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 ge
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Re:Really. (Score:4, Funny)
So you want to hire someone fresh out of law school who never worked for a company, or what?
I was more thinking along the lines of a Zen Buddhist monk.
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The major problem - one of the major problems, for there are several - one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well known fact, that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary
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"...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.
So do you believe she was serious or not? Because if she allowed the opinions of her former employer to guide her work, she'd do an enormous amount of good by mostly eliminating software patents.
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You assume google wants to get rid of software patents, rather than corner the market?
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You assume google wants to get rid of software patents, rather than corner the market?
It's not an assumption. Google dislikes software patents and actively lobbies against them. Google has been forced to play the patent game or be destroyed by lawsuits, but the company really doesn't like it.
Companies (Score:2)
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This article? Drones should be banned from private use, says Google's Eric Schmidt [theguardian.com]
Re:Companies (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Ask Mr. Data for comment (Score:2)
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. [youtube.com]
lmgtfy (Score:1)
Well at least she might be able to teach the examiners how to google for prior art.
Not likely to help (Score:2)
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
Re:Not likely to help (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Not likely to help (Score:5, Informative)
Huh, I didn't realize that. Looks like, for large companies at least (there are some discounts for individual inventors), the fees [uspto.gov] break down roughly like this:
So basically the USPTO gets $1600 if the patent is rejected, or $15,980 if it's approved.
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The lyrics of the US national anthem should be changed to "Fuck you, I got mine"
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Huh, I didn't realize that. Looks like, for large companies at least (there are some discounts for individual inventors), the fees [uspto.gov] 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?
All your installed base are belong to USPTO (Score:2)
Re:Not likely to help (Score:4, Insightful)
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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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 [patentlyo.com].
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,
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No, if only one in a hundred meets the maintenance fees, it's around a 10% increase in income from maintenance fees. It doesn't really matter how low it is, because there is no incentive for not paying maintenance
Made up numbers do not support credible arguments (Score:2)
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 yo
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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 hav
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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 tha
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Because $16K over 12 years is chump change for most of the companies filing patents. Also they seem to have this paranoid notion that it is much better to keep around something that they might need than not have it and want it later.
Most of the companies filing patents are filing dozens, if not hundreds, each year. Over 12 years, you could easily end up with a portfolio of patents numbering in the thousands. For example, everyone's favorite patent troll company, Intellectual Ventures, has upwards of 80,000 patents, so for them, you're talking about maintenance fees of over a billion dollars over those 12 years, if they maintain all of them for the full term.
Or... (Score:4, Informative)
"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.
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To the extent that she gets her perspective of patents from working for Google, she won't do this. Google is still a pretty young company, with relatively few patents (though the Motorola merger netted them a number of them). Coming from that atmosphere of a relatively small upstart struggling against the much larger patent portfolios of its older competition, she's much more likely to find sympathy with those who have concern about patent trolls and companies using patents to enforce market power than sh
We'll get a new app for submitting patents (Score:1)
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
seem a better fit for the NSA (Score:2)
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Back then "Don't Be Evil" was more of a slogan than a PR statement.
You people... (Score:1)
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No. Most of our votes don't mean shit thanks to Gerrymandering. [snagfilms.com]
Educate yourself, fool.
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Revolving Door Policy (Score:2)
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.
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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.
Right. She's only temporary, though. She's been appointed deputy director, and the director slot is vacant. There's a power vacuum at the top of the USPTO; in the last few months, the director (Kappos, who was a good guy), the deputy director, and the general counsel quit.
"Head of the Silicon Valley office of the USPTO" - not. There is no Silicon Valley office of the USPTO [uspto.gov]. It was killed by budget cuts. [arstechnica.com] So the USPTO had a spare manager around. There's a power vacuum at the top of the USPTO; in the last f
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benefits all their users, not just the lawyers (Score:2)
Once a lawyer, always a lawyer.
Dream on (Score:4, Insightful)
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I agree. So we need to ask the question: Who is her client? Google, the US Government, or the US People?
It has been shown, especially as late, that those employed by the government are not necessarily working for the government. And rare is the case where someone working for the US Government is also working for the US People...
Alex, I'll take... (Score:2)
Alex, I'll take 'Regulatory Capture for $800'.
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Alex, I'll take 'Regulatory Capture for $800'.
The USPTO was 'Regulatory Capture'd by lawyers long ago.
Wishful thinking (Score:2)
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
All you cynics (Score:1)
This guy, who has been waging the battle for a very long time, thinks this is a good appointment.
http://keionline.org/node/1853 [keionline.org]
People are people (Score:2)
YGBSM! (Score:1)