Pat Choate is the Senior Managing Partner of The Choate Partners. He is a political economist and author with extensive experience in both the public and private sectors. He has served as economic advisor to two Governors of the State of Oklahoma, Commissioner of Economic Development for the State of Tennessee, and as Vice President of Policy for TRW, Inc. a multinational corporation with extensive businesses in the defense, industrial and security sectors.

Mr. Choate has also held senior positions in the US Commerce Department, the Office of Management and Budget, and he has served on several Presidential, Congressional and Blue Ribbon National Commissions.

Pat Choate is the author of seven books, dozens of monographs and numerous articles on economics, national security, politics, and public policy. He has provided expert testimony before Congress more than 50 times. He holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Oklahoma. In 1996, Ross Perot chose Pat Choate to be his vice presidential running mate.

Pat Choate’s highly acclaimed new book is, Hot Property: The Stealing of Ideas in an Age of Globalization ( April 2005, Random House.)

His other important books are: Agents of Influence (1990, A.A.Knopf); The High Flex Society w/ Juyne Linger (1986); America in Ruins w/ Susan Walter (1983, Duke Press); Thinking Strategically; Being Number One: Rebuilding the U.S. Economy w/ Gail G. Schwartz (1980, Lexington Books); and Save Your Job, Save Our Country: Why NAFTA Must Be Stopped Now w/ Ross Perot (1993, Hyperion).

Hot Property: The Stealing of Ideas in an Age of Globalization

The problem of pirating and counterfeiting has grown from small-scale imitations of Levi’s jeans and Zippo lighters to a phenomenon that costs the United States an estimated $200 billion dollars per year. Pirated DVDs, computer software, designer clothes, and machinery flood global markets, inflicting heavy losses on U.S. businesses, while counterfeit medicines, auto and aircraft parts, and baby formula regularly cause fatalities around the world. The theft of artistic and scientific creation is draining our economy. It is the great economic crime of the twenty-first century. Hot Property is an impassioned, clear-eyed and sound assessment of one of the most serious problems facing the American economy today.

Pat Choate, the author of the best-selling Agents of Influence, examines the roots of conflicts over intellectual property and how the establishment of patent and copyright protections helped propel the American economy. He interweaves the stories of Eli Whitney, Alexander Graham Bell, and Thomas Edison to illustrate how the United States transformed itself from a largely agricultural society into a manufacturing, scientific, and technological superpower, giving rise to further copyright and patent protection laws. He traces the emergence of Germany, Japan, and China as rivals to American primacy through copying, counterfeiting, and underpricing American products and media. He reveals the shockingly meager effectiveness of current efforts to defend American businesses, inventors, and artists from corporate espionage. And he sounds a powerfully convincing warning that the general indifference of our government toward the security of American intellectual property is already affecting job security and the economy in general (an estimated $24 billion is lost each year to pirated films, music recordings, books, and other merchandise in China alone).