Posts Tagged: "Michelle Lee"

During a free-flowing conversation the former leaders of the Patent Office agreed on a number of items, including the biggest problem for the Patent Office over the last generation: fee diversion. Both Dickinson and Mossinghoff pointed to fee diversion as a constant and continuing challenge. Dickinson recalled one particular budget where nearly $250 million was diverted from the Patent Office budget, a huge sum given that at the time the USPTO annual budget hovered around $1 billion.

Earlier today USPTO Director Michelle Lee handed out the latest Patents for Humanity awards at a ceremony in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus. Launched by the USPTO in February 2012 as part of an Obama administration initiative promoting game-changing innovations to solve long-standing development challenges, Patents for Humanity is a competition recognizing patent owners and licensees who address global challenges in health and standards of living.

There were statements recognizing the need to keep open legitimate avenues to for innovators to protect themselves against infringement, and a strong desire to make sure that legislation focus on bad actions and actors. Not surprisingly, the Committee seems to largely think that the Innovation Act does strike the proper balance, although there was also recognition that changes could be made to make the bill better. USPTO Director Michelle Lee was wholeheartedly in support of fee shifting, justifying the position by saying that fault based fee-shifting will raise the costs for those who engage in abusive actions.

The immediate modification to the page limits for motions to amend is more in line with reality given the high burdens placed on patent owners. Even when patent owners sought additional pages, the norm was a three to five page extension. So getting ten extra pages is a welcome change. Changing the page limits, alone, is unlikely to impact the calculus underlying the strategic choice to amend. But when the choice is made to amend, patent owners will be better able to meet their burden.

The last time patent quality was being discussed the leadership of the Office had not come from the private sector, but rather came from within government ranks. Running the USPTO today are two people with substantial private sector experience and knowledge about how patents are used. This bodes well for the future, and is no doubt why so much of the focus on patent quality today was on issuing patents that deserve to be issued.

Earlier today the United States Senate confirmed Michelle Lee to head the United States Patent and Trademark Office, a position that has been vacant since the resignation of David Kappos at the end of January 2013. Lee’s official title will be Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

The USPTO has put SAWS to rest, literally. The USPTO has posted a message on the agency’s website explaining that after conducting an internal review of the SAWS program the agency has ”decided to retire this program.” Furthermore, the USPTO explained that ”[a]ny applications currently in this program will now proceed through prosecution absent any additional SAWS-related processing.”

On Thursday, February 26, 2015, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved the nomination of Michelle Lee to serve as the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Ranking Member Patrick Leahy (D-VT) was quick to urge the Senate to confirm Lee, who has been pending since last year.

During our interview Lee explains that she is supportive of expanding trade agreements currently under consideration in Congress, that she looks forward to working on patent quality and receiving feedback from stakeholders on how the Office can better address patent quality, and she explained that the Office was pleased with the recent Federal Circuit ruling in In re Cuozzo Speed Technologies, which is the first appeal of a final decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in an Inter Partes Review (IPR) proceeding.

She then pivoted to address the other side of the issue, which relates to issuing patents that should never have been issued in the first place. Lee explained: “I’ve see the effect of patents that should not have issued, or that have issued with a scope that is too broad. There is a also a cost associated with that as well… On average a start-up may get between $10 to $15 million to last over a number of years, and there are statistics that indicate that patent litigation can cost cost well over $1 million. So you can see if there is abusive litigation or a patent that should not have issued, there is a cost to our businesses.”

Michelle Lee, the current Deputy Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, was once again in front of a Senate Judiciary Committee panel yesterday, answering questions during her confirmation hearing. Lee, who would take over the vacant position of Director of the USPTO if confirmed, had already been subject to one confirmation hearing in December 2014. With little time before the end of the 113th Congress, then Ranking Member Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), informed Lee and the Senate panel that no vote would be taken in the 113th Congress and new members of the Judiciary Committee would be given the opportunity to ask questions prior to a vote in Committee during the 114th Congress, which started January 6, 2015. Newly elected Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and David Perdue (R-GA) did take the opportunity to ask questions.