Michelle Thorne, born January 15, 1985, is an American-born, Berlin, Germany-based Creative Commons activist. She holds a BA summa cum laude in Critical Social Thought and German Studies from Mount Holyoke College, USA, where she wrote an honors thesis on authorship, originality, and American copyright law. Thorne grew up in Heidelberg, Germany.

Thorne works as a project assistant for the international office of Creative Commons International in Germany. She claims to be on a personal quest to beat her Googleganger, a British erotica actress of the same name, at her search engine rankings.