The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the Hoover Institution Working Group on Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Prosperity (Hoover IP²) are holding a joint symposium at Hoover’s Washington, DC, offices on Tuesday, June 16, 2015; this is the first such partnership for Hoover IP².

In light of the ongoing debate in Washington over the US patent system sparked by the America Invents Act of 2011, the role of academia in providing scholarship and data is pivotal to the discussion. The symposium, titled “What Is the Academy’s Role in Evidence-based Policy Making for Intellectual Property?” will feature three USPTO Thomas Alva Edison Visiting Scholars who will present summaries of their research conducted in their fellowship year at the USPTO. The session will be chaired by Tim Simcoe of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

The second panel, chaired by commissioner F. Scott Kieff of US International Trade Commission, will convene four distinguished scholars in a roundtable discussion of how the academy can best contribute to intellectual property policy.

The Edison Scholars participating are Joseph Bailey (University of Maryland), Deepak Hegde (NYU), and Joseph Sarnoff (DePaul University). Stephen Haber (Hoover Institution and Stanford University), former Edison scholar Jay Kesan (University of Illinois), Rosemarie Ziedonis (University of Oregon), and commissioner Joshua Wright of the US Federal Trade Commission will form the roundtable.

The event is open to the public by preregistration here.

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