“When word gets out that intellectual property rights are not being taken seriously in the United States, especially for any class of patents that can be a convenient political target of powerful, well-heeled interest groups like banks, our voracious international competitors will pounce,” writes F. Scott Kieff, the Ray and Louise Knowles Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, member of the Property Rights, Freedom, and Prosperity Task Force there, and professor at George Washington Law School.
In his four-part series of essays published by Defining Ideas, Kieff talks about the proposed patent reform in the United States in The Perils of Patent Reform, Welcome to Patent Purgatory, Patent Reform Goes Haywire, and File First, Invent Later?
In The Perils of Patent Reform, Kieff discusses why Congress should vote down the America Invents Act. The next essay, Welcome to Patent Purgatory, shows how the America Invents Act beleaguers inventors with endless process and politics. Patent Reform Goes Haywire describes how pending legislation undermines property rights and international trade. The final essay, File First, Invent Later? examines how the America Invents Act turns the patent system into a lottery.
Kieff’s 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 by Andrew Sorkin.
