Courses

Intellectual Property - Winter 2002

Every lawyer needs to understand the basics of intellectual property law. Whether dealing with the logo on your clients taco stand, the ownership of web pages, whether your client's free speech claim is trumped by copyright law, or rights to your law firms own promotional materials, intellectual property issues now pervade most areas of law.  The course is intended to give the student enough information to recognize intellectual property problems, manage simple issues, and know when the client should be referred to an intellectual property expert.  It will also serve as good background for more advanced intellectual property courses. This is a text book course and you must buy the book.  We will not cover all the material in the book, but will focus on the core areas of intellectual property: trade secret; trademark; copyright; and patent.

Text - Intellectual Property in the New Technological Age, Second Edition, Mark Lemley, Professor, Peter S. Menell, Professor, and Robert P. Merges, Professor, Aspen Publishers (2000) - available at the book store or from Aspen.  There is also a statutory and case supplement that you must buy.

Exam Update - Just to make your life easier, I have decided to allow you to use the Supplement on the exam.  You may also prepare and use a one page, two sided 8.5 x 11 crib sheet.  This must be printed so that it can be read by humans, no mircodots.

New!!Old Exam (there was no supplement available for this exam)

Intellectual Property in the New Technological Age - Updates - These are late breaking cases that were not available when the supplement was printed.  You may be assigned cases to read from this WWW site.

10 Jan 2002

Introductory lecture covering Chapter 1.  You do not need to read the chapter before the lecture, but it will help you if you do.

15 Jan 2002

31-66, and Chapter 1 if you have not already read it.

17 Jan 2002

66 - 84

22 Jan 2002

84 - 123

24 Jan 2002

123 - 147

29 Jan 2002

147 - 174

31 Jan 2001

Class Canceled

Feb 5 and 7 2001 - No Class

Feb 12

174 - 209

This is complicated - read the materials carefully, including the C & Q and the problems.

Feb 14

209 - 239

Feb 19

Makeup Class - Class will meet at 12:30 rather than 1:30, and continue until 2:45, subject to fatigue.

We will cover Infringement, 239 - 295 - Patent Law Overview / Patent Law Overview - HTML.

Feb 21

Class on research methods in intellectual property law - no assigned reading.  Start on Tuesday's reading.

Feb 26

295 - 345, concentrate on Defenses and Remedies.  We are skipping Festo (in the supplement) for the moment, in hopes that the Supreme Court decision will come down before the course is over.

Feb 28

345 - 374

March 5

374 - 413.  Check out this NY Times article on CD copying.  Another interesting development, Palm has to put up $50,000,000 bond in patent infringement suit over Graffiti.  For more information on copyright infringement actions in the news, see Chilling Effects Clearinghouse.

March 7

413-457

March 19

457 - 483

March 21

483 - 526

March 26

483 - 557

March 28

557 - 578

Trademark Study Guide I - 557 - 680

April 2

Important Link - will be discussed in class.

578 - 640 - use the study guide to help organize your reading.

April 4

640 - 680

April 9

680 - 713

April 11

713 - 737

April 16

737 - 768

April 18

768 - 780

April 23

Finish Trademark Chapter, start review of update materials at Intellectual Property in the New Technological Age - Updates.  Read the sections through trademark.

April 25

Finish review of update materials, review for final. Discussion of whether the exam should be open materials.