International Intellectual Property Law

3 units

This course will equip law students with the basic knowledge and skills they need to to engage in international intellectual property practice involving transactional work or litigation. It will also explore the social, economic and cultural considerations that underpin intellectual property law around the world. The first part of the course will introduce the private and public law topics--territoriality, national treatment, choice of law, treaties and trade--that frame the substantive rules of intellectual property law. The second part of the course will consider the substantive rules of intellectual property (copyright, patent, trademark, unfair competition, trade secrets, and design law) themselves from a comparative and international perspective. This part of the course will primarily explore the requirements of the WTO TRIPS (i.e.Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement, the two Great Conventions of the 19th Century (i.e. the Paris and Berne Conventions), as well as various subsequent and subsidiary multilateral agreements. The second part of the course will also touch on selected regional agreements and transnational law (i.e. NAFTA and various EU Directives). The course will be taught by means of a casebook containing series of practical problems, for some of which a written response may be required. Regular class attendance and preparation is required. The final grade in the course will be based on a final exam, part of which may be objective, and part of which will be an essay question, and any written problem assignments made during the course of the semester. (Students in the IP LLM program can use this course to satisfy the IP LLM seminar requirement with the addition of a paper; this course is not eligible for satisfying the JD seminar requirement.)