Postgraduate Course: Intellectual Property Law, Innovation and Creativity (LAWS11370)
Course Outline
| School | School of Law |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Intellectual Property laws are often associated with the aims of promoting 'innovation' and 'creativity'. But how do Intellectual Property laws impact upon innovation and creativity? Do they promote or hinder them? What is the relationship between Intellectual Property Laws and the variety of activities that they are designed to affect in everyday life? Are there gaps between what Intellectual Property laws aim to achieve and actually achieve? Why do these gaps exist and how can they be filled? How should Intellectual Property policy be formulated? This course will explore these questions in order to examine the nature of Intellectual property from a law and society perspective. |
| Course description |
The course will build on the legal knowledge acquired by the students from existing courses on the legal and international aspects of IP law and will provide a complementary inter-disciplinary perspective to the subject. It will do so by introducing various studies and enquiries which have used, amongst others, historical, legal & economical, socio-legal and anthropological approaches to question and critique important concepts and policy questions within Intellectual Property law. It will centre on several existing empirical studies to enable the students to gain an awareness of the perceptions and implications of IP law in the real world. These examples will give some insight into the application and role of IP law for the various stakeholders, i.e. creators, rights owners, users, the general public and the public interest, and will serve as case studies for the students to develop their own critical and empirical research.
The course will require the students to address a real or hypothetical question in the field of IP law using any one or more of the above approaches. This will give them hands-on experience to examine IP law in society by relying on secondary or primary source materials from non-legal areas and relating them to legal materials.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | To enrol in this course students must have knowledge of the core elements of Intellectual Property Law including patents, trademarks, copyright and design rights. This knowledge can be either acquired through undertaking the Intellectual Property 1 and 2 courses or demonstrated through any earlier knowledge, training or experience that students may have. |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- An awareness of the role and importance of the law and society perspective for IP law in addition to the doctrinal approach, in understanding many key questions and concepts.
- An appreciation of how such perspectives contribute to an evaluation of IP policy and practice.
- A deeper understanding of the concepts and normative questions permeating IP law.
- A practical understanding of policy questions in IP law through carrying out a piece of non-legal research and setting it appropriately within its legal context.
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Reading List
Please note that there is no one text or textbook which covers the subject matter of the course and reading on the course will include a range of books, book chapters, and journal articles available through the University library, as well as online materials including governmental and institutional reports, journals, blogs, and news items.
Some examples of the type of reading covered in the course is indicated below:
Academic empirical scholarship analysing a range of primary and secondary data on the role of IP e.g. S Kheria, ¿Copyright in the Everyday Practice of Writers¿ in J Jefferies and S Kember (eds), Whose Book is it anyway? A View from elsewhere on Publishing, Copyright and Creativity (Open Book Publishers, 2019), pp. 141-180; T Sichelman and SJH Graham, ¿Patenting by Entrepreneurs: An Empirical Study¿ [2010] 17 Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review 111; E Fauchart and E Von Hippel, ¿Norms-based Intellectual Property Systems: the case of French Chefs¿ [2008] 19(2) Organization Science 187
Academic and policy reviews which evaluate a range of IP evidence or empirical scholarship on the role of IP e.g. K Raustiala and CJ Sprigman, ¿When are IP rights necessary? Evidence from innovation in IP¿s negative space¿ (Chapter 11) in B Depoorter and PS Menell (eds) Research handbook on the economics of intellectual property law, Vol.1 (Edward Elgar, 2019) pp. 309 ¿ 329; L Orsenigo & V Sterzi,¿Comparative Study of the Use of Patents in Different Industries¿ [2010] 33 Knowledge, Internationalization and Technology Studies (KITeS).
Reports by institutions, industry bodies, and governments on the role of IP e.g. WIPO, ¿World Intellectual Property Report 2015: Breakthrough Innovation and Economic Growth¿ (2015)
Detailed reading lists for each seminar will be made available during the course.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
(a) communication skills, oral and written
(b) intellectual skills in identifying a non-legal approach to address a legal problem, the ability to gather and engage
with non-legal materials, organise, evaluate and present them
with relevant arguments
(c) Managing time and taking responsibility for their work
(d) team work skills |
| Keywords | Intellectual Property Law,Law and Society,Socio-legal studies |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Smita Kheria
Tel:
Email: smita.kheria@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Bethan Walters
Tel: (0131 6)50 2386
Email: bethan.walters@ed.ac.uk |
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