F. Scott Kieff

F. Scott Kieff, a Republican of Illinois, was sworn in on Friday, October 18, 2013, as a Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission. Nominated by President Barack H. Obama, he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on August 1, 2013, for the term expiring on June 16, 2020.

Before being sworn in, Commissioner Kieff took a leave of absence from his post as a Professor at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, DC, which he joined in the summer of 2009. He came to George Washington University from Washington University in Saint Louis, where he was a Professor in the School of Law with a secondary appointment in the School of Medicine's Department of Neurological Surgery. He was named Fred C. Stevenson Research Professor at the George Washington University Law School in the fall of 2012.

Also before being sworn in, Commissioner Kieff resigned his roles at the Stanford University Hoover Institution, where he was the Ray & Louise Knowles Senior Fellow. He also served as Director and a Member of the Research Team of the Hoover Project on Commercializing Innovation; as a Member of the Steering Committee and Research Team of the Hoover Working Group on Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Prosperity, or IP2; and as a Member of the John and Jean De Nault Task Force on Property Rights, Freedom, and Prosperity.

Commissioner Kieff previously served as 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, Commissioner Kieff practiced law for over six years as a trial lawyer and patent lawyer for Pennie & Edmonds in New York and Jenner & Block in Chicago and as Law Clerk to U.S. Circuit Judge Giles S. Rich. After entering academia, he regularly served as a testifying and consulting expert, mediator, and arbitrator to law firms, businesses, government agencies, and courts.

Commissioner Kieff's research, teaching, practice, and consulting work focused on the law, economics, and politics of innovation, including entrepreneurship, corporate governance, finance, economic development, trade, intellectual property, antitrust, bankruptcy, medical ethics, technology policy, and health policy. 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.

Originally from the Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago, he became a lawyer in New York City and now lives with his family in Washington, DC. Before attending law school at the University of Pennsylvania, he studied molecular biology and microeconomics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and conducted research in molecular genetics at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, MA.

The U.S. International Trade Commission is an independent, nonpartisan, factfinding federal agency that provides trade expertise to both the legislative and executive branches of government, determines the impact of imports on U.S. industries, and directs actions against certain unfair trade practices, such as patent, trademark, and copyright infringement.