Info/Law

Over at Concurring Opinions, Fred Yen asks about the ideal structure of a law school’s IP curriculum, especially the relationship between the survey course and the more detailed separate courses about copyright, patent, and trademark. The comments are interesting — definitely go over there and add your two cents if you are among those who have strong feelings on this admittedly somewhat parochial subject (I am closing comments here). Eric Goldman also points to this related 2005 survey by Ken Port about what IP courses are listed on the web site of every law school.

Minnesota offers the IP survey course and the more advanced courses independent of each other, though I think the people who teach those classes are mulling whether to revise that system or at least bar people from taking the survey if they have done a lot of other IP. One complication is that, if the survey is a prerequisite to everything else, then that leaves very IP-focused students only three semesters to go more in-depth. It’s also counterproductive to limit time for IP courses given how much our IP faculty has grown. Finally, if the survey is a prerequisite then it really must be offered in the fall (or else students will have to postpone IP classes until their third year!) Making the survey a co-requisite instead of a prerequisite can help, but then that undermines the logic of requiring it in the first place.

Filed under: Copyright, Law School, Minnesota, Patents, Trademarks