Rights In Digital Age

3 Credits.

This course will provide an overview of important aspects of intellectual property law, with an emphasis on the important legal and policy issues presented by the tremendous growth in computer technology over the past several decades, especially the Internet. The rights that various parties have with respect to intellectual property in the digital domain, such as creating, modifying, using, distributing, storing, and copying various types of digital data, will be explored. The concurrent responsibilities, and potential liabilities, of those parties will also be addressed. In particular, various topics in copyright, trademark, patent, and trade secret law will be presented. Copyright law will be presented in a historical context, with an emphasis on its applicability to emerging technology issues. The course will also address how trademark law has been affected by – and modified in response to – the growth of the Internet. Patent-law topics will include what constitutes protectable subject matter. The goal of the course is to provide those involved or interested in digital-rights management with an understanding of the impact of intellectual property law on digital technologies.