Intellectual Property and Digital Innovation

3 credits · Professional

Digital innovations are built from code, data, brands, standards, and human ingenuity. But they are also built upon the legal rights and responsibilities that govern them. This course studies the relationship between those legal rights and processes of digital innovation. It aims to equip digital innovators with the tools they need to develop informed intellectual property (IP) strategies, understand the limits of IP and contracts, and when to consider alternatives to exclusive rights. The course begins with a foundation in intellectual property law relevant to digital innovation, including copyright, patents, trademarks, and confidential business information or “trade secrets”. Emphasis is placed on Canadian law with reference to relevant international frameworks. The course then studies how IP is converted into strategy, licensing choices, and the alignment of exclusive rights with product and market goals. This includes an exploration of how law places internal limits on some IP strategies, with reference to Canadian competition law and IP’s own internal exceptions and limitations. Finally, the course explores alternative and open innovation models with a practical introduction to open-source licensing and governance, situating open source within contemporary digital innovation. This includes a grounded understanding of the role and growing ubiquity of open-source components in digital products and services. Through seminars, discussions, debates, and interdisciplinary learning, students will learn to select and operationalize rights strategies across the open/closed spectrum, communicate trade offs to technical and managerial audiences, and design legally compliant (pro-competitive), innovation- enabling practices. CALENDAR NOTES: Assessment Method: Attendance and participation, oral examination, paper. This course fulfills the Major Paper requirement. RESTRICTIONS: Maximum enrolment - 8 students. PREREQUISITES: PRE/CO-REQUISITES: LAWS 2178 – Intellectual Property Law I.