Hopefully the days of patent trolls and litigation are coming to an end as the U.S. Senate confirmed Michelle Lee as the new head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
The position has been vacant since February 2013 after David Kappos resigned. Since then, Lee has been the acting director at the USPTO. Prior to joining the USPTO in 2012, Lee was a former deputy general counsel and head of patents and patent strategy at Google. The hope is that her background and experience at Google should hopefully reduce the amount weak and blanket type patents that are being used as the basis of recent lawsuits between companies.
Robert Stoll, the commissioner of patents from 2009 to 2011 said “Lee’s main task will be to improve the quality of patents granted by the agency”, and continued by saying that “assuring better quality patents will help blunt the patent troll problem.”
Lee was President Barack Obama’s choice for the role and was confirmed by the Senate after the Senate Judiciary Committee approved her nomination last week.
What do you think of Michelle Lee’s appointment as head of the USPTO? Let us know in the comments below, or on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter.
[button link=”http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/09/us-usa-patents-lee-confirmation-idUSKBN0M52DO20150309″ icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Reuters[/button]Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
