 It's The Cube. Here is your host, Jeff Crick. Hi, Jeff Crick here with The Cube. We are in downtown San Francisco, very special segment of our On the Ground series, really highlighting our Women in Tech feature that we've had as an ongoing segment. And we're really honored to be joined here by Michelle Lee, who is the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It's a mouthful. Congratulations. Welcome. Thank you. Michelle Lee recently put in the job by Obama, and you did your acceptance at South by Southwest. That's pretty innovative. Yes. I had the pleasure of being sworn in on South by Southwest on the plenary stage of the festival, and it was in a group of technology innovators and entrepreneurs, and most people in that community never see a Washington, D.C. style swearing in. So we decided, you know what? These are our customers. These are who are here to help support and promote and support their efforts. So we decided to have the swearing in on the stage of South by Southwest. They were very excited, and it was a special privilege and honor to be sworn in as the first woman head of the United States Patent and Trademark Office in our country's 225 plus year history. Yeah, that's amazing. Now, we're going to get you into the secretary job next, so I don't know if Obama will still be around when you want. If I do that, I'll be next in November next year. You've got the candidate. So that's terrific. It's a big job. I didn't realize, $3 billion budget, almost 13,000 people. So you're busy. It's a big group of people to keep moving. A little busy, yes. I would say so. So let's, before we get into that, let's get into your history a little bit because I'm always curious to know, kind of, what was your journey? How did you get here? You got a really interesting story. You grew up in the Bay Area, got phenomenal education at MIT with a bachelor's in electrical engineering, a master's in electrical engineering, a master's in computer science, and then you took a little bit of a turn and went and got your law degree. So I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about your kind of academic journey, those choices, and how you ended up going from hardcore tech at MIT to a Stanford law degree. Yeah, no, I'd be glad to. And I was, as you said, born and raised in the Silicon Valley. And as a young girl, I loved math and science. And I can remember building a handheld radio with my dad in our living room. And I was always passionate about science and invention and creation and making. And all the dads on the street that I grew up on were engineers. Many of them started companies based upon a clever invention they patented that they then obtained venture capital funding for to build a company that would bring their invention to the marketplace. So that was a lesson that I had very early on growing up in the Silicon Valley. And it's what inspired me to study electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. I was one of a small number of women at MIT studying electrical engineering and computer science at the time. And the numbers got even smaller when I went into grad school. But I had a wonderful technical education. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I was about to get my PhD in computer science. You were going to go PhD? I was. That was the route that I was on. And my thesis advisor was terribly disappointed when I did not go on with my PhD in computer science. Now that usually goes to whole different tracks. I remember when I got my bachelor, I talked to the professors about PhD. And they're like, no, no, no, not unless you really want to be a professor. You want to make the investment on a PhD track. It's a long and hard thing. So you not only made it. So was that really kind of for academia or you just love the topic so much? I grew up in the Silicon Valley where science and being an engineer was the most honorable thing you could do. And so that's what I grew up with. And that's the path that I was on. But then when I was at MIT getting my master's degree, I realized that there are a lot of things you can do with a technical degree. And at the time, there was the Apple versus Microsoft case going on in the courtrooms and it had to do with how do you protect the graphical units or interface of the icons, the scroll bar, the trash can. I thought, wow, that is interesting. We're applying really old case law to really cutting edge technology. And I thought, you know what? That's what I want to do. That's how I'm going to make my contribution. And that's when you made your swap. So I decided, I worked at HP Labs Research Laboratories on a computer programmer and I worked at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. And I was having a wonderful time and then I was working on my graduate degree. And I dawned upon me that there are lots of things you can do with a really good technical background. And that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to work on cutting edge issues in law. I wanted to help innovative companies protect their inventions and help them commercialize it in the marketplace. So I went to Stanford Law School, graduated there. And ended up working in the Silicon Valley for about two decades. Representing small startup companies, big fortune tech 100 companies. On a whole range of intellectual property and other legal issues helping them grow and expand their business. And around 2013, or 2003, excuse me, Google asked if I would join their patent team and head up their patent efforts. Right, so just to back up a little bit. So it's high tech issues, but it's kind of ironic because it was mice, trash cans, and desktops, right? That originally got me to move off of you. They were talking about this. But then you went into the legal world. You went into Fenwick and West, obviously a really top end firm. Deals with a lot of startups, a lot of big companies. And then, like you said, you went to Google. So then, again, why the shift? Why did you decide to go from a place where you get to touch a lot of different cases into Google? Where now you're just working for one very specific company. What is a big change? I mean, the change from being a legal advisor to a whole range of clients, different technology areas, different industries to a client. But, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Fenwick. Great clients, great startups, all different varieties. But at the time when Google asked me to join, it was at the time where I had used the search engine. And I thought, you know what, the search engine's pretty good. And I wasn't really looking to change. I wasn't looking to go in-house. I was very happy with my practice and so forth. But they said, why don't you come on over, meet the folks. And you had a really bright, impressive group of individuals. And I've had the privilege of working with many bright individuals. And there was something exciting about the individuals at the company and their mission. And the search engine, of course, was better than any other search engine. And there were a lot of search engines. I don't know if you remember. Well, you're smarter than me. I thought the search engine wars were over. I was like, who's going to give Google any money? Web crawler is dead. Altavista is dead. Excited home is dead. And even if they come up with a cool search engine, you're only one click away from going to another one as soon as the next best algorithm comes in. You're smart. All those competitive search engines were still on the market competing for. It was unclear which one would prevail. And I thought, you know what, I like the company. I like the product. I like the team. I'll join it for a little while, see how it goes. And one year led to two years led to eight going on nine years. And I have to say, it was an incredible journey. It was one job, but it was really like many, many different jobs because of the changes that the company underwent. So where was Google size-wise from the time you joined to the time you left approximately? It was a relatively young company. I can't remember the precise number of employees, but for the most part, it was US ReserviNU only. We had a small number of products and services, search ads, and a couple of others. By the time I left, we were in every country of the globe. We were in a wide range of areas, including mobile phones, driverless cars, Google Glass. I mean, just all these areas that you never even imagined the company would be in. And when I joined the company, we had a small handful of issue patents. And by the time I left, the team and I helped build that patent portfolio to over 10,500 patent assets in eight short years. And it was an exciting journey. Wow, busy time. So then did you get the call or did you get the itch when you decided to make the move to the public sector? Well, I think what happens is, given one's career, if you've had a certain number of experiences in the past and I have, I've had a very rich set of experiences. I represent all kinds of startup companies. I've written patents. I've asserted patents in patent infringement cases. I've defended against patent infringement cases on behalf of clients. I've bought, sold, and licensed patents. Sometimes for very large sums of money. And you develop this experience and perspective from being on the tech side, on the innovation side, to helping startup companies navigate these issues from small to very large. And you get to the point where you have an ability and a perspective to contribute something of value that your country needs. And when you're asked to serve in those roles, I think it's a privilege to consider it. And if you're going to all swing it, I think I firmly believe in each of us giving back to the country, to our country, which is a wonderful country. It's given my family and myself tremendous opportunities and really giving back in ways that you can. And so it was the desire to both give back and to have an impact on some issues that are very important to this country at this time, to the president at this time. And really, to American businesses, there are a lot of changes that are going on that, you know, growing up in the Silicon Valley, we had the incentives that nurture and promote the innovation that we see. And you can't take it for granted that that will continue to occur in the future. You have to make sure that you actively manage it and that our policies are right. Right, right. And so the ability to contribute to that, to help play a part in ensuring that we have an innovative society where intellectual property continues to incentivize innovation for future generations is pretty important work. Yeah, yeah, although I'm sure the taxicab unions might have issue with the latest innovation that we're seeing with our friends at Uber, that's a whole nother topic that we won't get into that. But so let's jump into your current role, your current job. So first off, kind of, you're out here, what are you doing in the Bay Area? I know you got some, their satellite office now, you got a directive to really get outside of Washington. I know that's where you got your start, really. So talk a little bit about kind of what's going on with the USBTO and what's going on with the satellite offices and kind of up to date on what you're up to. So the trip here to California is driven in part to, again, reach out to our stakeholders. So I met with the UCLA Technology Transfer Office and students and entrepreneurs in the Los Angeles area. Earlier today, I met UC Berkeley campus with Skydeck and Accelerator and Incubator. And really, and the USBTO offers so much to support startup and entrepreneurship activity. And we've got the opening, as you had mentioned, of our regional office that will be located in the Silicon Valley in downtown San Jose, opening on October 15th of this year. We're very excited about it. And as far as I'm concerned, there is nothing but upside to these satellite offices, these regional offices, because the USBTO is there and has so many resources to offer inventors and entrepreneurs how to file for a patent. What are the considerations that you need to think about in terms of various forms of intellectual property? What do I protect with a patent, a trademark, a copyright, a trade secret? What are those things? How can I get access to an attorney if I don't quite have the full legal resources? How can I accelerate the filing of my patent application if I want to get venture capital funding? And so a whole range of services. It's really the USBTO bringing its full range of services out to the local innovation community. I mean, businesses knew this long ago. If you've got clients in a region, you're out in the region. You've got to be with the customer. So how many people will be at the offices in Silicon Valley and where are the other regional offices? So the regional offices are in Dallas, Detroit, Denver, and the Silicon Valley. And let me tell you, there were a lot of cities all over the country who wanted to have a United States Patent and Trademark Office in their home city. How'd you pick Detroit? That surprises me. Well, I mean, there's a lot of innovation, oftentimes a mechanical innovation that occurs. It's a city that is rich with history in terms of inventive activity. I mean, the automobile industry. But also, there's a resurgence now of young companies in that area. Someone out of Ann Arbor, or a second of the driver? Correct. So the university's there. In fact, I was there at Tech Week earlier this year. And there's a lot of activity there. And we're working with the incubators there. And we're looking to support their activities. So we're very excited about it. But we have offices in every time zone in the continental United States. So they were equally distributed throughout the country. And the idea is, well, we can't be in every city across the country. We're trying to spread ourselves out. And each satellite office serves a region, the Silicon Valley office, the West Coast region, the Detroit office, the Rust Belt region, and the Dallas office, the Southwestern region. And of course, we've got our home office in Alexandria, Virginia, which serves the East Coast. So we're very excited about that. And yeah, that's opening October 15. Well, good for Detroit. I hope they get it going out there. It's fascinating. I mean, clearly it's a huge history of innovation. And the universities are such big drivers of this kind of activity. And to have University of Michigan right there, it's actually a pretty popular school for kids out here to help move that forward. It's terrific. So what are some of your kind of current priorities in your role given the current environment that we're sitting in? Yeah. So there are a lot of priorities that we're working on. Give me your top two or three. It's like picking your favorite child. You can't do that. But let me just give you some ideas. So I mentioned the opening of the satellite offices. That's clearly a priority. I think that's all good for our country. And I think, well, another priority is ensuring that we achieve balanced and meaningful legislative pattern reform. There's been a lot of discussion lately amongst companies in the press, in our business communities about the cost of abusive patent litigation. Some people point to what's called Troll patent litigation. I don't like to use the word because I have yet to come across a definition of a Troll that everybody can agree upon. But nonetheless, there are costs to society for entities that engage in abusive litigation tactics. And the legislation pending before the House and the Senate now are designed to address and curtail some of those abuses so that we can curtail the abuses but also enable those who need to enforce their patent rights to enforce it. And it's important to get that balance. So that's what the legislation is dealing with in terms of in Congress. And that's a priority for the administration and also just making sure we issue the very best quality patents in a timely manner. I mean, our businesses rely upon it. They need it to build their companies. They need it to obtain the venture capital or financings that they need to develop the technology. And they need to be able to recoup their investment after they've worked so hard to bring it to the marketplace. Talk about the challenge, though, of just the speed of innovation. And you're at Google, which is a really valuable experience to understand how fast things move. And as you said, you guys did 10,000 patents in eight years or whatever the number was, and don't misquote you. For older institutions, the government specifically, it doesn't move by the same speed as Silicon Valley does, which moves at a different speed than the rest of the country. Now, we're even in a really crazy spot with the cloud and mobile and social and enabling people to innovate even faster. So I would imagine that the legal precedents kind of lag as they usually do, because usually it's case law that kind of sets new trends. How are you trying to keep up with that? Are you able to? Are you changing priorities, procedures? It's got to be a really challenging time. And then, of course, you always get into who's got the patent. And then it's actually funny, the garbage can, the desktop, and the mouse. Because at what point, how far out does something like that go? You look at like Facebook started as a dating app for a couple of lonely guys at Harvard. And now it becomes a single sign-in vehicle for a ton of other applications. So I would imagine trying to keep in front of that, as well as kind of the defining law that dictates where things go. It's got to be getting more and more challenging. So let me say it's a great problem to have. We are lucky to be living in a country that is as innovative as it is, and that is moving as quickly as it is in creating new inventions and ideas. I mean, so many countries across the globe want to have a system just like ours, where we have this problem to deal with. I love the fact that we get all different kinds of technologies happening, evolving so quickly, and that our examiners have to deal with it. That is a good problem to have. So to answer your question, how does the agency adjust to that, adapt to it, stay on top of it, our examiners are really good. But we don't do it single-handedly. We partner with the public. So one of the reasons why I'm out here is to say, hey, look, we're out here. These are all the great things that we're doing to support the startup and entrepreneurship communities. But when I was at UC Berkeley and UCLA, I said, look, you guys have some of the world renowned experts in various technology areas. We have to examine patent applications in these areas. And the technology is changing constantly rapidly. Come to the PTO. Help us train our examiners. They're super bright. They're super hardworking. But you are on the cutting edge. Come and explain it to us. As a result, you'll get better quality patents issued faster with better customer service. Everyone's excited. Our examiners love it. And the experts in the field love coming to the PTO or coming to our local satellite office, being able to give an hour presentation on their area of expertise, it makes complete sense. So that's one way of staying on top of the constantly changing technology. But it's a great problem to have. I mean, I'm glad we have this problem instead of not enough innovation, not enough change, same old technology. I think our economy will be worse off if we're in that situation. Yeah, no, and we're jamming. And it's just interesting, too, because not only do you have all these enablers that push the pace of innovation and the breadth of innovation down and wider within a company, but, too, now we've got this API economy where a lot of these things in Uber is just a great example, where it's basically, there's an integrating a map and a payment system and a GPS for the guy to drive around. I mean, it's more complicated than that. But really, it's this aggregation of existing technologies in new and innovative ways. And I imagine that the opportunities and challenges are pretty significant. And we're also taking advantage. I mean, given my Silicon Valley background, of course, I'm a huge fan of big data. And I believe that big data can help businesses make better informed business decisions. And so we are bringing some of the big data techniques to the USPTO. We measure a lot of things in our process. So we're analyzing that data, seeing where we can refine, seeing where we can improve the training to our examiners based upon measurements of results. And we'll fold that back into training so it's a feedback loop. And we're also looking to share a lot of our data with the public and make it accessible. So we have a lot of data about who's inventing what, in what region of the country, and how active. Because if you think about if somebody invent something, one of the first things they're going to do is file a patent application. And you're going to know, after a certain period of time, what area they're doing the work in. So it's a very good leading indicator of where the innovation is occurring in our country and to what level of activity. So we're looking to share publicly available and publicly releaseable data to the public so that the businesses can make better informed business decision about the competitive landscape. Do you go out to shows? Do you go out to Spark Summit and Hadoop Summit and all those things? I went to South by Southwest. No, I'll send you some small shows, send out some examiners. I'll give you a tip. Spark's the next crazy big thing coming. It was a tech week. There you go. OK. So now let's shift gears one more time. We've been going. We could go for a long, long time. And let's talk about why we're here, which is really increasing the amount of women that stay in technology. I think there's a big issue where women drop out. Both we read about as grade school girls like 4th or 5th grade, there seems to be some evidence. And then also, there's evidence that women drop out of tech careers as well relatively early in their career. So obviously, you're a super successful woman. You've really bridged technology as well as law, as well as public service, which is phenomenal. You've got a daughter, which you've talked about in other interviews, which is terrific. So it's personal. I do. What are just kind of your priorities around this area and really helping women specifically get into tech, stay into tech, be successful in tech? Well, thanks for the question. I very much appreciate it. And it's an issue that I care about personally, but it's also within the mission of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Because if you step back, the mission of the US Patent and Trademark Office at the highest level is to promote American innovation. That's across the country geographically and across all demographics. So men, women, boys, girls, every ethnicity, and so forth. So that is the goal of the USPTO is to promote American innovation. And if you think about it, there's no age requirement on a restriction on filing a patent application. You have an age restriction for when you get a driver's license when you can vote. But there's no age restriction. Others done it all. There's none whatsoever. And in fact, we have some minors who apply for patent applications. I would love to see more American children, boys and girls across the country being inventive, creating, making, and filing for a patent application. So on the issue of girls and women in tech and STEM, you're right. I mean, they are lagging in numbers. They tend not to enter into the STEM field. They drop out at higher rates. In fact, the Harvard Business Review came out with a recent study that said, well, first of all, Girl Scouts of America came out with a study that said 57% of all girls surveyed said that they are not considering a career in STEM. So 50% of girls surveyed are not considering a career in STEM. Girls got age girls. So that would be. I don't know what the ages are, but there were girls surveyed. Where were they surveyed, OK? And then what happens is when they do enter the STEM field, according to the Harvard Business Review study, 10 years into the profession or the field, 41% of the women leave the profession compared to 17% of men. So you have fewer women entering in the STEM fields and they're dropping out at a higher rates. And so as the first woman head of the United States Patent and Trademark Office in our country's history, and the Patent Office goes back to the Constitution, so it's been around since the founding of our country. Patent office and the Marines, right? Those are the two founding institutions. We're in the Constitution. So from day one of our country, right? We had a Patent Office. So it took a little while, but they got a woman head. And I give credit to President Obama and so forth for putting me in this position. And I'm very honored to have it. But I also looked at the numbers of the USPTO. And what we've found is about 16% to 18% of the Patent applications filed have at least one woman as an inventor. 15% to 16%, that's still pretty low. So that's an issue that we are looking at. We are engaging in particularly targeted outreach to encourage starting from the beginning at elementary school level. We've got to get more girls interested in STEM. And so to that end, we sponsor a program with Invent now called Camp Invention. And you're going to like this for kids across the country, really. We have 100,000 kids who enter into a one week summer enrichment program where they come to Camp Invention. And basically it's a very carefully designed program where they're given a design project, build a pinball machine. They go into a room, they get wire, metal, wheels, batteries, balsa wood. And then they have to design a pinball machine or whatever the objective is. They have to sketch out a design. They have to prototype it. They have to build it. They have to tweak it. They have to revise it. If it doesn't work, they have to iterate again. And then they sketch out the basics of a patent and they start thinking about a business model. So it's hands on learning about the application of science and STEM technologies. It's not textbook reading of science and technology. You should have seen. I visited Camp Invention in Alexandria, Virginia. There was not a board kid in that room. They were all engaged. They were collaborating. Fantastic. That's the kind of programming that's going to get all of our children across America interested in kind of invention, creation, making. That's one example. Another example is that we have established a Girl Scout patch on Intellectual Property. And you know what? I was a Girl Scout. And in order to earn this Girl Scout patch on Intellectual Property, you have to learn a little bit about patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets. And you have to actually build something and create something. And if so, at the end of the process, you earn an Intellectual Property patch. And that's great, because like I said, I was a Girl Scout in the patches I remember earning. We're on sewing and first aid. Right, right. And I think we can do a little better than that. And we should be doing a little better that in this day and age, don't you? 15%. I mean, absolutely that is all. But it's interesting because what you're doing is really taking kind of another order of degree of really perception of what they're working on. It's one thing to kind of design and build an invention that's cool and put all those things together. It's a whole other thing to think about the concept of, how do you patent it? How do you trademark it? The intellectual property behind the invention. So that is super innovative. And do they get kind of separation between those two concepts? Yeah, I built it. OK, now your task is to define it in such a way that you basically own the concept. They do. They do. There's a difference between creating it, inventing it, prototyping it, and then kind of sketching out the basics of what is novel here that might be new, that nobody else has done this way before. And then the next step, which we would like to encourage them to go in, is what can I do as a business matter to capitalize upon this invention that I've created or this thing I've created? And what kind of company might I establish and what need in society might it meet? Right, right. So we're very excited about programs like that. And we also have a collegiate inventors program where we have a competition for college students across the country. And they have to submit their inventions. We have a committee that evaluates them from industry and academia. And the winners share prize in the amount of $100,000 total. And many of them, there's no restrictions on the prize money. They can use it for anything they want. And many of them put it into a company that they're starting. And they oftentimes file a patent on their invention. And last year's winner was a woman who came up with a patch for immunization. And if you think about it, immunizations are usually given by shots drawn from vials that need to be refrigerated. In this case, if you're going into third world countries where you don't actually have as easy access to refrigeration and the maintenance of the proper temperature for the vaccine, a patch that slowly releases the vaccine into your body or the immunization agent is actually a much preferable way. So it was an incredible invention. I think she got a patent on it. Where did she go to school? Do you remember? I think it was SUNY, one of SUNY's schools. Yeah, Stony Brook. I can't remember, but it's from SUNY, yeah. I was going to ask if you're doing stuff in college. Because we've interviewed Maria Clavet, who's a president at Harvey Mudd, and also on the board of Microsoft. And I asked her this similar question. And her read on it is really that the young girl's stuff is important, but it's less important as really that early years in college. She said, you know, that's where you can really get them with a really solid CS class, EE class, and really lock it. Because they're kind of mature enough to understand and to get it and to fall in love. And that's where she spends a lot of her time, obviously. She's running Harvey Mudd, so she's got a vested interest there. But really going after the college thing. I think every step along the way is needed. I mean, you can't start too early. You can't get our kids excited about invention, creation, and science, technology, engineering, and math too early. The earlier you spark it, the more you maintain it. And every stage along the way, the better. That avoids the attrition that we were talking about. So we're very excited about that. And at the USPTO, we're taking a number of steps as well to make sure that we have that next generation of inventors ready to file patent applications and to start companies and to make our society and our economy strong. Because it will only stay strong as long as we continue to innovate. Absolutely. So, Michelle, I really appreciate your time. I know you're busy. You're flying all up and down the coast. You're visiting people. So I'll give you the last word before we sign off. What are you excited about the next six months? It's kind of on the top of your agenda. Let's see. Where's the list too long? The list is very long. In the next six months, I guess I'm excited to see where we end up on the patent reform legislation. I'm very excited to see the improvements that we'll continue to make to these proceedings that are before the Patent and Trademark Office called Post-Grant Review, which allows the public to bring a patent back to the office to test the validity of the patent in a manner that's cheaper than district court litigation. So it's playing a critical role in our overall ecosystem in making sure that we have the very best quality patents in the system. And that patents that should not have issued can be removed. And patents that issue or should have issued stay in the system. Awesome. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Awesome. So I'm Jeff Frick with Michelle Lee. We've been talking about the US Patent and Trademark Office. You're watching theCUBE. See you next time.