Like most patent practitioners, I am very pleased with President Obama’s recent nomination of a new Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).  The nominee is David Kappos, vice president and assistant general counsel for intellectual property at IBM.  Kappos has over 20 years of intellectual property experience and manages IBM’s patent and trademark portfolios.  Worth noting is that each year, IBM obtains more U.S. patents than nearly any other company. 

In Kappos’s capacity as VP and assistant general counsel for IP at IBM, his views on many substantive patent law issues are well known.  For example, he is not a fan of pure business method patents (preferring, for example, the machine-or-transformation test).  He also generally supports harmonization efforts, including “opposition-like” post-grant review procedures.  His opinions on such issues have been praised by many and criticized by some.  Interestingly, some have also criticized his nomination for not emphasizing his potential to fix various problems of the USPTO, but instead focusing on his knowledge of the patent system in general. 

I, on the other hand, am relieved that his nomination has been surrounded by discussions of his general knowledge of the patent system.