Ex-Google lawyer nominated as patent office director

Michelle Lee, formerly Google's chief patent lawyer and currently acting director of the US Patent and Trademark Office, has been nominated by the Obama administration to be the next permanent USPTO director. Lee will be the first head of the patent office to have a background at an Internet company.

Lee's nomination comes months after the administration floated the name of Philip Johnson, a lawyer at Johnson & Johnson who was an outspoken opponent of patent reform. The idea of nominating Johnson evaporated after a negative response from tech companies.

Choosing Lee has won praise all around, although the pro-reform forces are likely happier than the anti-reform forces given her background at Google. Lee was one of the first corporate lawyers to be vocal about the problem posed by "non-practicing entities," also known as patent trolls.

The Innovation Alliance, which pushed against the patent reform bill, said "she has demonstrated a nuanced appreciation of the complexity of the innovation ecosystem in the United States," according to statements gathered by Politico. The pro-reform Coalition for Patent Fairness, which gives voice to the pro-reform efforts of other big tech companies including Google and Cisco, called her an "outstanding leader." The group added, "The President could not have made a better choice and we urge the Senate to quickly confirm this nomination."

"Michelle is a proven leader with strong management skills, having ably led the PTO since January," US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker said to Reuters. "She brings decades of legal, technical and business experience in delivering real results for our nation’s innovators."

While Lee is the first nominee from an Internet company, she's not the first to come from tech. The last director was David Kappos, head of IP at IBM, a company that routinely gets more patents than any other. At its peak, IBM had a $2 billion patent-licensing operation.