Peter is an attorney registered to practice with the State Bar of Michigan (P29657 since 1978) and a patent attorney registered to practice with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (31,114 since 1983). He has also been a member of the Engineering Society of Detroit since 1980.

Born in the Empire State and resident of the Great Lakes State, Peter’s burning passion for inventing arose during his high school days.

In one of his many stories, during the summer of 1968 he enjoyed listening to music on his reel to reel tape recorder. But he hated the need to flip the reels to hear the other track when the tape ran out. In a sudden blaze of inspiration, that problem became an invention. He figured out that by vertically re-positioning the head and reversing the capstan, a tape recorder could automatically play both tracks of a recording. He called it a “Self-Reversing Tape Recorder.” But in August, while driving his Mustang on the I-75 overpass of 8 Mile Road on his way to an open-house at University of Detroit, he heard on the radio, “Bell and Howell announces auto-reversing tape recorders.” He almost wrecked the car—of course, the news also wrecked his chance to become a consummate inventor at the tender age of 17.

Undaunted, Peter was all the more determined to obtain a degree in physics so he could further his inventive pursuits. The University of Detroit supplied this need, and introduced him to his advisor/mentor, department chairman Gerhard Blass, who had worked on the German atomic bomb program. Superconductivity became Peter’s inventive passion, and in 1974 his master’s thesis was entitled, “A Thermodynamic Comparison between the Magneto-Mechanically and Magneto-Calorically Induced Superconductive Phase Transitions in a Type I Superconductor Culminating in a Proposal for a New Type of Superconductive Motor.”

With law in his windshield and physics in his rearview mirror, Peter travelled down the road to law school. Sitting in a boring class with the called-on student reciting nonsense, Peter’s mind suddenly lit with a grand epiphany: how a Type I superconductor could be magneto-calorically cycled to produce work (mechanical or electrical) using just the heat of the atmosphere for fuel. After class, he ran to the law library and jotted down his idea, an idea that was to take him far and wide. He eventually obtained U.S. Patent 4,638,194 on January 20, 1987 for his “Coherent Magneto-Caloric Effect Superconductive Heat Engine Process Cycle.”

Peter recalls, with a smile, the years he spent assisting his father, who was a renowned labor educator and arbitrator, to create a library of labor relations videos under the banner of the Labor-Management Dispute Settlement Institute. Peter produced and directed the shoots made possible by his father, who utilized the videos in nationally syndicated seminars. Having served as an arbitrator for the Michigan Employment Relations Commission, Peter now serves as publisher of the LMDSI Media Library.

While teaching physics at University of Detroit, Peter apprenticed at two patent law firms, then set-up his own firm, Keefe and Associates, in Eastpointe, Michigan. Passionate for the individual inventor, Peter championed their inventive aspirations with sage advice and friendly mentorship. Recognizing inventing is expensive, Peter minimized costs by utilizing flat fee and contingency fee arrangements.

Not satisfied with his law practice as the sole avenue of his inventor help, Peter created the Inventors Association of Metropolitan Detroit (IAMD) in 1986. Turning to two of his clients, Peter Ruppe and Adam Banks, he set-up the organization, then served as chairman of the monthly meetings and wrote the monthly newsletter. Peter’s proud to say the IAMD is still alive and well today.

Peter took his passion for inventor assistance to new heights when he became outside patent counsel to General Motors Corporation. As it turned out, GM’s engineer inventors needed just as much mentoring as his individual clients!

While attending the 1st International Conference on Challenges to the Second Law in San Diego, 2002, Peter met Vaclav Spicka of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Theo Nieuwenhuizen of the University of Amsterdam (emeritus), which led to their creation of the biennial scientific conference “Frontiers of Quantum and Mesoscopic Thermodynamics” in Prague.