PCI Biography

News

On September 10, 2012, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate F. Scott Kieff as a Member of the United States International Trade Commission and Joshua D. Wright as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. On September 11, 2012, President Obama formally nominated Kieff and Wright; and the Senate confirmed Wright on January 1, 2013. Of the twelve people who have been members of our Project's research team, three have been nominated by a United States President to serve as a member of one of the independent government commisions focusing on the economy. In 2008, Troy A. Paredes, one of the Project's three founding investigators, was nominated by President George W. Bush as a Member of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a post in which he presently serves. On January 3, 2013, Kieff's nomination, along with the others pending at the end of the Senate's term, were Returned to the President under the provisions of Senate Rule XXXI, paragraph 6 of the Standing Rules of the Senate. On February 4, 2013, Kieff was re-nominated by President Obama.

On April 12, 2013 Richard A. Epstein debated the patent system with Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner at PatCon 3. Professor Epstein and Judge Posner were both featured speakers at the event, and the debate was covered at Patently-O and Written Description.

On October 24, 2012, Richard A. Epstein participated in a Federalist Society podcast on the topic "Patent Rights: A Spark or Hindrance for the Economy?"

Perspectives on Commercializing Innovation, a new book co-edited by F. Scott Kieff, is now available from Cambridge University Press, Amazon.com, and many other booksellers. See this link for more information and a discount code on orders placed through Cambridge University Press.

Stephen H. Haber and Aldo Musacchio were awarded the 2012 Manuel Espinosa Yglesias Prize for their paper, "These are the 'Good Old Days': Foreign Entry and the Mexican Banking System." The juried prize was awarded by the Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias (CEEY) and includes both a monetary award and publication of the paper by the CEEY.

"Patents are not the enemy", an article by Rod Cooper, Richard A. Epstein, and Stephen H. Haber, was published in the Chicago Tribune on August 15, 2012. (Free registration may be required to view the article online.)

Stephen Haber received the Walter J. Gores award, Stanford University's highest teaching honor, on June 17, 2012.

Rainfall, Human Capital, and Democracy, a paper by Stephen Haber and Victor Menaldo was cited in The Economist on April 7, 2012. Haber has expanded upon that work in a new working paper, Climate, Technology, and the Evolution of Economic and Political Institutions.

Richard A. Epstein, F. Scott Kieff, and Richard Spulber's latest paper, The FTC, IP, and SSOs: Government Hold-up Replacing Private Coordination, was published in the March, 2012 volume of the Journal of Competition Law & Economics.

F. Scott Kieff was consulted for the New York Times article "Trademarks Take on New Importance in Internet Era," published on February 20, 2012.

The European Academy of Sciences and Arts has elected F. Scott Kieff for membership in the Academy for his work in the fields of the social sciences, law, and economics.

On November 24, 2011, Joseph Straus was awarded the title Ambassador of Science of the Republic of Slovenia by the government of Slovenia.

F. Scott Kieff was interviewed on the John Batchelor Show on November 22, 2011 (skip to 29:30 to hear the interview).

Defining Ideas has published Patently Bad Policy, an essay by F. Scott Kieff on two upcoming Supreme Court patent cases, Hyatt v. Kappos and Mayo v. Prometheus.

F. Scott Kieff was selected as a finalist for the 2011 World Technology Award for Law, presented in association with TIME, Fortune, CNN, MIT Technology Review, and Science.

Richard A. Epstein, F. Scott Kieff, and Daniel F. Spulber submitted a white paper entitled The FTC's Proposal for Regulating IP through SSOs Would Replace Private Coordination with Government Hold-Up in response to the FTC’s Request for Comments and Announcement of Workshop on Standard-Setting Issues.

A statement by Geoffrey A. Manne and Joshua D. Wright on the recent FTC antitrust investigation of Google was cited in numerous publications, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the National Journal, and InformationWeek.

A new four-part series of essays by F. Scott Kieff on proposed patent reform in the US has been published by Defining Ideas: The Perils of Patent Reform, Welcome to Patent Purgatory, Patent Reform Goes Haywire, and File First, Invent Later?. The essays were cited by Representative Dana Rohrabacher in a speech on the House floor on June 22, 2011 and in the New York Times Dealbook column.

A draft paper co-authored by Stephen Haber, Rainfall, Human Capital, and Democracy, was featured in a Bloomberg article on April 4, 2011. Mr. Haber was interviewed about the paper on Bloomberg TV's Street Smart. The paper was also featured in the Wall Street Journal's Week in Ideas for April 9, 2011.

A new paper co-authored by Stephen Haber, Do Natural Resources Fuel Authoritarianism? A Reappraisal of the Resource Curse, was featured in the Freakonomics blog on April 4, 2011.

F. Scott Kieff and Henry E. Smith provided invited testimony before the FTC Hearings on The Evolving IP Marketplace: Aligning Patent Notice and Remedies with Competition; and their works were also cited in the report recently published by the FTC on March 7, 2011.

F. Scott Kieff was interviewed on the John Batchelor Show about the article Why Business Isn't Getting in The Game. The interview begins at 1:40.

An article by Stephen H. Haber and F. Scott Kieff on Why Business Isn't Getting 'In The Game' was published by Investor's Business Daily on February 11, 2011.