Wilbur Ross, secretary of commerce

[presence]

on Wednesday, Mr. Trump will announce Wilbur Ross, the billionaire investor, as his secretary of commerce, according to the transition team.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/us/politics/steven-terner-mnuchin-trump-treasury-secretary.html?smid=tw-nytpolitics&smtyp=cur&_r=1

most importantly from my perspective Ross will preside over US Patents, I'm uncertain as to his outlook

Ross is worth 3 Billion; he made his money on pump and dump of coal and steel

[presence]

most importantly from my perspective Ross will preside over US Patents, I'm uncertain as to his outlook

well this answers it


The tougher trade deals that the author of “The Art of the Deal” would negotiate, Ross spelled out in the FT, would include safeguards such as triggers for automatic renegotiation if the trade gains are not fairly distributed, prompt relief against non-tariff barriers such as

quotas,
“ironclad sanctions” against currency manipulation,
zero tolerance on intellectual property theft,
and strict environmental and safety standards.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/billionaire-spreads-the-trump-gospel-on-trade-2016-09-07

quota the fuck out of international trade
currency controls limiting trader's ability to make corrections
entitlements to state sanctioned imaginary "property" will pump bullshit "stocks"
and regulation upon regulation else thump on the head with a stick

most excellently fucked liberty pick

I suspect my kid's patented life will move from $1/minute to $2.
Pharmabro's stocks will soar!

[Jan2017]

well this answers it
zero tolerance on intellectual property theft,

This is a very good thing if you are an innovator btw, and the very reason for patents in the first place.
It is still the US District Courts that decides patent infringement cases and claims.

Outgoing Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker going bye-bye . . .

https://www.commerce.gov/news/blog/2016/11/secretary-pritzker-highlights-work-us-patent-and-trademark-office-employees

[presence]

This is a very good thing if you are an innovator btw, and the very reason for patents in the first place.

Innovators find way to do things more efficiently.
Patents protect the overpriced from free market competition.
In the absence of State; in truly free markets there could be no patents
although violating patents may be illegalized; using violence to enforce imaginary entitlements to ideas is actually unlawful

[Jan2017]

Innovators find way to do things more efficiently.
Patents protect the overpriced from free market competition.
In the absence of State; in truly free markets there could be no patents
although violating patents may be illegalized; using violence to enforce imaginary entitlements to ideas is actually unlawful

There is more incentive to innovate if the embodiment of that invention can be protected temporarily (17 years ?),
especially in a global economy with corporate espionage.

Society much better with a patent system than without one.

[Zippyjuan]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2016/11/29/what-you-need-to-know-about-likely-commerce-secretary-wilbur-ross-trumps-billionaire-pal/#1f5992ea8d60


While Donald Trump has railed against wealthy elites running the country, he has also promised to appoint top businesspeople to his administration. The latest: Wilbur Ross. Trump plans to nominate the private equity billionaire and vocal Trump supporter for Secretary of Commerce, according to reports citing transition officials. The two have known each other for more than two decades.

Ross – who has long railed against “bad trade deals” and the decline of manufacturing jobs in America — made a fortune purchasing bankrupt businesses and flipping them for a profit. In August Trump named Ross to his economic advisory council. Now, pending his acceptance and Senate approval, he will serve as the liaison between Trump and the business community.

The son of a New Jersey school teacher and a judge, Ross attended Yale and considered a career as a fiction writer until a summer internship on Wall Street steered him toward finance. After an getting an MBA from Harvard, he spent two decades heading Rothschild Inc’s bankruptcy advisory business, where he represented investors in Trump’s failing Taj Mahal casino in the early 1990s. Ross and Carl Icahn convinced bondholders to strike a deal with Trump, who some investors wanted to push out, which allowed Trump to retain control of the property.

Ross stuck out on his own in 2000, launching WL Ross & Co. after buying control of a $200 million Rothschild investment fund he had been managing and raising another $250 million from investors. He began scooping up ailing firms, putting millions into struggling steel, coal and textile companies across many of the regions that helped propel Trump to the White House. (He sold WL Ross & Co. to investment management firm Invesco in 2006 for about $375 million, but has remained its chairman and chief strategy officer.)

In what may be his most notable deal, Ross brought together LTV Steel, Acme Steel and Bethlehem Steel in the early 2000s under the name International Steel Group; in 2005 he sold the firm to what is now ArcelorMittal for $4.5 billion, netting $260 million for investors. His foray into investing in distressed coal companies that same year proved similarly lucrative: Ross went public with his coal assets, under the banner International Coal Group, and personally made $210 million.

In 2006, however, 12 coal miners suffocated after an explosion at a West Virginia mine that was owned by International Coal Group. The mine had a history of safety violations; the lone survivor and families of the deceased miners sued. The company settled all of the suits and was sold to Arch Coal in 2011 for $3.4 billion.

During the recession Ross targeted another struggling industry: banking. He invested in troubled banks in England, Greece and Cyprus. He was also part of a group of investors that acquired a 35% stake in the Bank of Ireland during the height of Europe’s 2011 debt crisis. He sold the last of his stake in 2014, nearly tripling his initial investment. Ross has also reportedly bet hundreds of millions of dollars on downtrodden oil and gas firms since the price of oil began to slide more than two years ago.

His turnaround tactics have been controversial at times. While some view him as a savior, risking millions to revive firms that might otherwise go out of business, others have called him a “vulture investor” for preying on weak companies, sometimes slashing jobs and pensions to turn a profit. And in August WL Ross & Co. agreed to pay a $2.3 million fine to the SEC related to charges that it didn’t properly disclose its fee allocation practices to some investors. The firm did not admit any wrongdoing and volunteered to pay back the fees with interest, on top of the fine.

It remains to be seen how Ross — whose investments in financial institutions around the globe, for instance, could raise questions about conflicts of interest — will comply with federal ethics laws governing cabinet members’ business interests.

The 79-year-old billionaire lives in Palm Beach, in a 16,000-square-foot estate just up the road from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. He maintains an art collection that Forbes estimated to be worth at least $100 million, including Chinese contemporary paintings and a number of works by Belgian surrealist René Magritte.

His second wife (he has been married three times), Betsy McCaughey, served as New York’s lieutenant governor from 1995 to 1998 under George Pataki. She was also named to Trump’s economic advisory team in August.

Ross initially supported Marco Rubio’s big for the presidency, according to Federal Election Commission data, but turned his attention — and wallet — to the GOP nominee in July, when he gave $200,000 to the Trump Victory Fund, the joint fundraising effort between Trump and the Republican National Committee.

[presence]

Society much better with a patent system than without one.

how is it that we measure what is best for "society"?


Here again institutions come to the aid of the old firms that form the cartel.

[]

The owner of a patent enjoys a legal monopoly which, other conditions being propitious, can be used for the attainment of monopoly prices.

-von Mises

much more here:

https://mises.org/blog/mises-intellectual-property

also see kinsella's work on IP:

https://mises.org/library/against-intellectual-property-0