Prerequisites: None

Exam Type: In Class

Roughly half of this course will examine and assess the legal rules in the United States and other countries governing patents. The other half will explore policy issues pertaining to patents. Those issues include: the determinants of scientific and technological innovation; the increasingly important roles played by “standard setting organizations” and the ways in which the legal system should regulate those organizations; the degree to which the patent system should differentiate among fields of technology; the appropriate treatment of reverse-payment settlement agreements; and the relative rights of employee inventors and their employers. Each week, one of the three classes will consist of a recorded lecture (available at https://ipxcourses.org/lectures-2/). The other two classes will consist of discussions of case studies, which are designed to explore in more depth the rules and policies introduced in the lectures and reading assignments.