Course Code : LAW 407

Course Title : Intellectual Property Law

Weekly Teaching Hour: 3-hours lecture per week, 1 (1-hour) tutorial every week

Who may enrol : Compulsory course for year 4 (senior) LLB students .

Prerequisites : Previously studied and passed a Laws courses

Lecturer : To be announced on August 2020

Description : This course considers the means by which the products of human intellectual creativity and ingenuity are identified as protectable subject matter.

Intellectual property is the study of property in intangibles. Although this sounds rather abstract (and at times it is), it also involves issues which are of vital importance to businesses, consumers and the general public. Have you ever downloaded music from the internet? Have you ever taken a prescription drug? Do you photocopy books in the library? Have you ever chosen goods because of the brand image that is associated with them (and possibly paid a premium because of this)? Do you believe that lifesaving drugs should be freely available to those who cannot afford to pay for them? If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions then you’ve come into contact with, and may even have infringed, intellectual property rights.

The course is grounded in a thorough study of the main intellectual property rights:

Patents for the protection of inventions.

Copyright for the protection of creative works, but also to protect the activities that are necessary to market those creative rights.

Trade marks for the protection of signs indicating the origin of goods and the common law equivalent, passing off.

Designs: overlapping to an extent with each of the foregoing, the laws of designs protect aspects of shape or configuration or the appearance of articles, and

The protection of trade secrets.

The course also has a considerable international and European law dimension. The harmonisation of intellectual property rights has been one of the key tools in the quest for the creation of an internal market. We will consider the extent to which this harmonisation has been achieved, and will examine the on-going attempts at further harmonisation. We will also analyse the degree to which broader attempts at ‘internationalising’ IP have influenced the development of the law in the UK.

 Recommended Textbook (s) and Supplementary Books :

  1. Intellectual Property Law ,5 edition , by Lionel Bently (Author), Brad Sherman (Author), Dev Gangjee (Author), Phillip Johnson  (Author), OUP Oxford, ISBN-10: 0198769954 ISBN-13: 978-0198769958
  2. Intellectual Property Law: Text, Cases, and Materials 3/e, Tanya Aplin (Author), Jennifer Davis  (Author), OUP Oxford; ISBN-10: 0198743548, ISBN-13: 978-0198743545
  3. Q&A Intellectual Property Law, 4th Edition, by Janice Denoncourt, Published  by Routledge , ISBN 9781138831001
  4. Reading lists and other materials will be provided for students registered on the course via online by lecturer.

Course Assessment:

  • Class Participation 10%,

  • Mid-term Examination 30%,

  • Assignments 10%, 2 x formative essays

  • Final Examination 50%, 100% Unseen 3-hour written examination

Attendance 95 % compulsory.