The American Innovation Machine

NOTE: Attendance is by invitation only
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Wesley Cohen is professor of economics and management and the Frederick C. Joerg Distinguished Professor of Business Administration in the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. He also holds secondary appointments in Duke’s department of economics and School of Law, is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and serves as the faculty director of the Fuqua School’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He has published widely in scholarly journals, including the American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Management Science, Review of Economics and Statistics, Science, and the Strategic Management Journal. His most recent research is on the “division of innovative labor,” investigating the ties across firms and between firms other institutions that influence innovative performance. He served as a main editor for Research Policy and served on the National Academies’ Committee on Intellectual Property Rights in the Knowledge-Based Economy, the National Academies’ Panel on Research and Development Statistics at the National Science Foundation, and, most recently, the National Academies’ Committee on the Management of University Intellectual Property. He was named to the World Economic Forum’s “Global Innovation 100” in 2008.

Sean Gates, a partner at the Los Angeles offices of Morrison & Foerster LLP, is a litigator with extensive experience in antitrust, unfair competition, patent, and trade secret matters. He represents companies before the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Gates has been recognized by Legal 500, Super Lawyers, and Benchmark Litigation. In 2011, he was named an “Attorney of the Year” by California Lawyer. Prior to joining Morrison & Foerster in 2008, Mr. Gates served as a deputy assistant director at the FTC where he received the Distinguished Service Award. Gates has particular expertise in matters involving the intersection of antitrust and intellectual property. Gates serves as a non-governmental advisor to the International Competition Network, in which competition authorities from more than one hundred countries address antitrust enforcement and policy issues. He has served in a number of leadership positions in the ABA Section of Antitrust Law, is currently the chair of the Intellectual Property Committee, and has served as editor-in-chief or author for several publications on antitrust issues. Prior to his career as an attorney, he was a mechanical engineer in the petroleum and aerospace industries.

Stephen Haber, Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and A.A. and Jeanne Welch Milligan Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University, is also professor of political science, history, and (by courtesy) economics at Stanford. He has been awarded every teaching prize at Stanford, including the Walter J. Gores Award for distinguished teaching. His research examines political institutions and economic policies that “hold up” innovation. His current research examines the creation of regulatory barriers to entry in finance, the economic and political consequences of hold up problems created by different systems of agricultural production, and the comparative development of patent systems. Haber’s most recent book, Fragile by Design (with Charles Calomiris), examines how governments and industry incumbents often craft banking regulatory policies in ways that stifle competition and increase systemic risk.

David Kappos is a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP; former undersecretary of commerce and director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). He is recognized as a leader in the field of intellectual property, including intellectual property management and strategy, the development of global intellectual property norms, laws and practices as well as commercialization and enforcement of innovation‑based assets. As director of the USPTO, he advised the President, Secretary of Commerce, and the administration on intellectual property policy matters. He led the agency in dramatically reengineering its entire management and operational systems as well as its engagement with the global innovation community. He was instrumental in achieving the greatest legislative reform of the US patent system in generations through passage and implementation of the Leahy‑Smith America Invents Act, signed into law in 2011. Prior to leading the USPTO, Mr. Kappos held several executive posts in the legal department of IBM. Mr. Kappos was named one of the 50 Most Influential People in Intellectual Property by Managing IP, one of the Top 50 Intellectual Property Trailblazers & Pioneers, one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America by The National Law Journal, and Intellectual Property Professional of the Year by the Intellectual Property Owners Association. He was inducted into the Intellectual Property Hall of Fame by Intellectual Asset Management Magazine in 2012.

Scott Kieff was sworn in on Friday, October 18, 2013, as a Commissioner of the US International Trade Commission for the term expiring on June 16, 2020. Kieff is on leave of absence from his post as the Fred C. Stevenson Research Professor at the George Washington University Law School. He was the Ray & Louise Knowles Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; a faculty member of the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center at Germany’s Max Planck Institute; a visiting professor in the law schools at Northwestern, Chicago, and Stanford; and a faculty fellow in the Olin Program on Law and Economics at Harvard. Before entering academia, Kieff practiced law for over six years as a trial lawyer and patent lawyer and served as a law clerk to US Circuit Judge Giles S. Rich. He was recognized as one of the nation’s “Top 50 under 45 by the magazine IP Law & Business in May, 2008, and was inducted as a Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in March 2012.

Maureen K. Ohlhausen was sworn in as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on April 4, 2012, to a term that expires in September 2018. Prior to joining the Commission, Ohlhausen was a partner at Wilkinson Barker Knauer, LLP, where she focused on FTC issues, including privacy, data protection, and cybersecurity. Ohlhausen previously served at the Commission for eleven years, most recently as director of the Office of Policy Planning from 2004 to 2008, where she led the FTC’s Internet Access Task Force.  She was also deputy director of that office. From 1998 to 2001, Ohlhausen was an attorney advisor for former FTC Commissioner Orson Swindle, advising him on competition and consumer protection matters. She started at the FTC General Counsel’s Office in 1997. Before coming to the FTC, Ohlhausen spent five years at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, serving as a law clerk for Judge David B. Sentelle and as a staff attorney. Ohlhausen also clerked for Judge Robert Yock of the US Court of Federal Claims from 1991 to 1992. Ohlhausen was on the adjunct faculty at George Mason University School of Law, where she taught privacy law and unfair trade practices. She served as a senior editor of the Antitrust Law Journal and a member of the American Bar Association Task Force on Competition and Public Policy.  She has authored a variety of articles on competition law, privacy, and technology matters.

Matthew Owen is chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights. Before coming to the Senate, he was a lawyer in private practice in the Washington office of King & Spalding LLP, specializing in appellate, constitutional, and administrative law. Owen is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and previously served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General in the US Department of Justice, and as a law clerk to Tenth Circuit Judge Neil Gorsuch.

Michael Risch joined the Villanova faculty as a professor of law in 2010. Prior to that, he taught at the West Virginia University College of Law and served as an Olin Fellow in Law at Stanford Law School. Risch’s teaching and scholarship focus on intellectual property and internet law, with an emphasis on patents, trade secrets, and information access. His articles have been published in the Stanford Law Review and Duke Law Journal, among others; online in the Yale Law Journal Online and PENNumbra; and less formally at the Madisonian, Prawfsblawg, and Patently-O blogs. Risch received his AB with honors and distinction in Public Policy and with distinction in Quantitative Economics from Stanford University, and his JD with high honors from the University of Chicago Law School. Prior to entering academia, he was a partner at intellectual property boutique Russo & Hale LLP in Palo Alto, California. 

Richard Sousa, senior associate director and research fellow at the Hoover Institution, is an economist who specializes in human capital, discrimination, labor market issues, and K–12 education. He coauthored School Figures: The Data behind the Debate and coedited What Lies Ahead for America’s Children and Their Schools and Reacting to the Spending Spree: Policy Changes We Can Afford, an assessment of the government’s response to the economic crisis of 2008–09. Sousa was responsible for launching the Institution’s major communications initiatives, including the Hoover Digest, Education Next, Policy Review, and Uncommon Knowledge. From 1990 to 1995, he directed the Institution’s Diplomat Training Program. He served as director of the Hoover Institution Library and Archives from 2007 to 2012 and was responsible for major acquisitions, including the Chiang Kai-shek diaries; the William Rehnquist papers; the Georgia, Estonia, and Lithuanian KGB files; and the B’ath Party collection.

Joshua D. Wright was sworn in as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission on January 11, 2013, to a term that expires in September 2019. Prior to joining the Commission, Wright was a professor at George Mason University School of Law and held a courtesy appointment in the Department of Economics. Wright is a leading scholar in antitrust law, economics, and consumer protection and has published more than 60 articles and book chapters, co-authored a leading casebook, and edited several book volumes focusing on these issues. Wright also served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review and a Senior Editor of the Antitrust Law Journal. Wright previously served the Commission in the Bureau of Competition as its inaugural Scholar-in-Residence from 2007 to 2008, where he focused on enforcement matters and competition policy. Wright’s return to the Commission marks his fourth stint at the agency, after having served as an intern in both the Bureau of Economics and Bureau of Competition in 1997 and 1998, respectively. Wright received his J.D. from UCLA in 2002, his Ph.D. in economics from UCLA in 2003, and graduated with honors from the University of California, San Diego in 1998. He is a member of the California Bar. Before his tenure at George Mason University School of Law, Wright clerked for Judge James V. Selna of the United States District Court for the Central District of California and taught at the Pepperdine University Graduate School of Public Policy.