Bloomberg Law
October 25, 2017
By Stephanie Russell - Kraft
![Michelle Lee, under secretary of commerce for intellectual property at the U.S. Department of Commerce, speaks during the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Dana Point, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg](https://biglawbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/305806124_1-5-e1508947777419.jpg)
Michelle Lee speaks during the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Dana Point, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg
Michelle Lee could have chosen any number of areas to focus on after leaving her role as director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in June. But she’s sticking to technology because that’s where the action is.
“I have always found it to be most interesting to work at the forefront of law, technology and policy, because there are no answers to those questions,” she said in an interview with Big Law Business.
Lee is currently the Herman Phleger Visiting Professor of Law at Stanford Law School in Palo Alto, Calif., where she will be teaching a course on so-called disruptive technologies this winter. Specifically, students will examine the case studies of driverless cars and artificial intelligence.
“These technologies naturally butt up against the system of laws and regulations in the areas of safety, liability, ownership issues, and these laws and regulations have the ability to either encourage or discourage these disruptive technologies,” Lee said.
Among other things, she plans to teach students how tech companies can engage lawmakers and policymakers to shape the legal environments they’re radically changing.