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Comment by caliagent | Hacker News Reader

Let's identify why she got the job under Obama: "Lee is the first female director in the USPTO’s history, and one of her priorities is getting more women into STEM jobs." Those two key words are major talking points with his administration. Now what did she say she'd do versus what she actually did that led to this change under the new administration: https://www.fastcompany.com/3047424/how-former-googler-miche...

http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/02/26/uspto-failed-fee-increa...

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You've already managed to post numerous ideologically inflammatory comments to HN. That amounts to trolling, and we ban accounts that do this. If you don't want to be banned on HN, please post substantive, thoughtful comments only.

Not trolling. These are my opinions and I've posted relevant articles for most of them. If you feel like banning me then at least be clear that Hacker News continues to stifle valid criticism because it dislikes the view it presents.

'Trolling' originally meant to deliberately ruin discussion by provoking others, but it turns out that most discussion-ruining isn't deliberate—it happens as a side-effect of people venting. Since the effects are the same when intended or not, it's reasonable to use the same word.

It's also more practical: we can't observe intent, but we can observe troll effects. And effects are what we care about anyhow. So when someone does things on HN that are known to ruin discussion by provoking others, we call it trolling regardless of how sincere they think they were.

By that standard, your comments have been trolling and you need to stop. I'm sure you can find more substantive ways to express your views if you want to.

It's also possible that her degrees from MIT and Stanford and experience as a lawyer at Google had something to do with it.

Her resume is beyond sterling, I literally don't believe you could find someone more qualified. But sure, she got the job because she's a woman. God people are awful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_K._Lee#Education_and_...

I agree, she was an astonishingly qualified candidate at the time of her appointment. It's really unfortunate to see the recent exodus of high-profile intelligent people in the current administration at a time where leadership is needed most.

I was lucky enough to get to know and work with her a bit, before her appointment. She is an amazing person.

Please edit and remove the anchor hashtag. The childhood section is even more awesome.

i just love that she build a TV, and then, as in "later", her "interest grew"–when she was 10.

People may be awful but those who are best at it are often also the loudest.

And something to do with her resignation. Didn't Obama's cabinet have a ridiculous number of PhD's, and Trump's end up replacing some Nobel laureates with Rick Perry?

Steven Chu (Nobel Prize in Physics 1997) was succeeded by Ernest Moniz (Nuclear Physicist, MIT Professor) who was succeeded by Rick Perry (who forgot which agency he was going to abolish if elected [1])

1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTNjhcyx7dM

George W. Bush didn't always appoint slouches either. Samuel Bodman was a professor at MIT and then went into industry. Spencer Abrahams, the prior officeholder, was a politico.

Yeah. GWB appointed a horse-trainer with zero experience to be head of FEMA, aka the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is, not surprisingly, responsible for dealing with, you know, emergencies.

DJT is no GWB.

These are the last 3 heads of the Department of Energy. Perry is especially hilarious in this context because he intended to abolish the DOE.

That wouldn't be so surprising (since the Environment Dept. head wanted to abolish it too, and Betsy Voss I'm sure wants to abolish the Education Dept). The surprising thing is that he believed that the Dept of Energy was to do with regulating the "Energy" aka Oil and Gas industries.

nah she stole that job from an innocent man, no way a woman could actually be qualified.

It's not necessarily about her being a woman, as much as a Google employee. Obama hired dozens of Google employees to prominent executive branch positions during his term.

http://www.googletransparencyproject.org/articles/googles-re...

Please reset your sarcasm filter.

Despite IPWatchdog's hugely pro-patent bias, there's at least one thing I can agree with them on: "...the Patent Office has become more arms dealer than honest broker."

>hugely pro-patent bias

Would you expect the director of the patent office to be anti-patent?

Is/ought fallacy?

It might be true that it's likely that directors of USPTO are "pro-patent", but OP's point was that the USPTO ought to be less "pro-patent".

Put another way, some government offices are charged with making more of an intrinsically good thing. "Justice", "Education". I expect the leaders of those departments to be pro-justice/education/whatever, just as I expect everyone else to be in favor of these intrinsic goods, insofar as we can agree on their goodness.

OTOH patents are not an intrinsically good thing. There is such a thing as too many patents, or patents issued too freely, or whatever.

Section 8, Clause 8:

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"

Not much latitude there.

The latitude to decide what actually promotes the progress of science and the useful arts seems pretty broad to me.

I think you've misunderstood. Do you think the federal government is actually competent to decide which inventions will actually promote the progress of science and the useful arts?

The issuing of patents is contingent on Congress's belief that doing so promotes science and the useful arts. If hypothetically Congress did not believe that any longer, they would be free to stop the activities of the patents and copyrights offices.

In practice I don't expect Congress will cease to borrow money on the credit of the United States, though I suppose in theory they could.

you could have taught george washington a few things about picking cherries

>Now what did she say she'd do versus what she actually did that led to this change under the new administration

Well, usually USPTO director changes at the start of a new administration. So the better question is: why was she kept on until now? what changed?

They were most likely waiting for the Commerce Secretary to pick and vet a replacement.

Lee's demise was a long time coming. Many small businesses and independent inventors absolutely couldn't stand how the USPTO had pretty much turned against them and become a monster.

>They were most likely waiting for the Commerce Secretary to pick and vet a replacement.

The first two paragraphs of this article seems to suggest this is not the case.

>Many small businesses and independent inventors absolutely couldn't stand how the USPTO had pretty much turned against them and become a monster.

Lee is pro patent reform. Small companies and Google like her. Large companies and the Innovation Alliance don't like her, as they are anti-reform.

As a small business owner inventor, and patent owner I think what the parent is talking about is the PTAB and the Inter Partes Review (IPR) process that is very expensive for a patent owner to defend against and. Lee is seen as someone who could place more limits on IPR's but has not. This directly benefits large companies at the expense of small patent holders.

For example, say you as a small time inventor have a valid patent on some great new widget. Big company X starts selling the widget you invented, you approach them and ask if they would license your patent, Big company X can afford to keep filing IPR's against your patent and it will cost you ~$200,000 each time. Big company X can milk you dry and draw things out for years so it becomes much more difficult as a small business to defend and license your patent. Lee seems to have really helped large tech companies at the expense of small inventors.

You are wrong. IPRs are much quicker and less expensive that district court litigation, which is what it replaces. If you're afraid of Big. Co.'s deep pockets, they're much scarier in district court! The PTAB is designed to be more efficient, quicker, and cheaper than district court, and it is by a long shot. And no, they can't file serial IPRs for the most part, there is strong estoppel that comes with an IPR proceeding to prevent just that very thing from happening. So if your patent is valid, then in less than a year and about $200k you can have that sucker gold plated and anointed by the PTAB and then enforce it to your hearts delight! Much better than several million $ and at least 2-3 years for a district court if you ask me. And if your patent is garbage, well you'll find that out quicker too and free up resources to go do something else.

Here are some articles explaining how IPR's hurt small business's and sole inventors...

http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2016/06/26/cuozzo-ipr-death-americ...

and one in particular that explains how Lee's management of USPTO policy has hurt small business patent owners...

"The AIA also allows the Director discretion to stop harassment of patent owners, but Lee has never once used that power despite the fact that at least several patent owners have had seven or eight inter partes review challenges filed against the same patent. The PTAB itself has finally started to consider harassment as grounds to refuse to institute. So bad and lopsided are the PTAB proceedings, that the Federal Circuit has found PTAB decisions to be arbitrary and capricious, and with respect to covered business method (CBM) challenges, the Federal Circuit has slammed the PTAB for creating its own definition and standard while ignoring the statute and regulations. So if Lee was referring to the PTAB and post grant challenges the most honest assessment is that the Office has utterly and completely failed patent owners and the patent system."

http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/02/02/michelle-lees-patent-qu...

The pop mechanics article is clearly written by a non-lawyer and retells the story of a guy who got a patent invalidated at the ptab. How does that support the conclusion that the ptab is bad for small businesses? That's like saying county court is bad for drivers because I got a speeding ticket. First you have to establish that the court/ptab got it wrong, and then prove that they get it disproportionately wrong for a certain category of people - small business. I just don't see that proved up in the article. And Gene Quinn is rabidly anti-ptab so I can't really rely on him to be impartial.

Edit: and the guy complains about spending $100k in defense... lol, that number would have been 10-30x higher for a district court proceeding to get to the same conclusion. And it would have taken years.

Interesting to read the argument of the side we don't usually hear from around here.

I guess we can hope that an entrepreneur starting a technology company would be equally concerned with both possibilities: getting sued unfairly vs. being unable to protect their own inventions. Around Silicon Valley, I think the former has been the greater concern, but I guess the pendulum is now swinging the other way.

Of course, ideally we would minimize the likelihood of both of those problems. But that seems to be very difficult.

Good call.

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