Course Listing:

Please Note: The courses listing below is provided for informational purposes, as a service to students at the University of Connecticut School of Law who are interested in pursuing studies in the area of Intellectual Property. The information on this page may not contain the most updated course offerings, and does not represent course offerings in a particular semester. For registration purposes, students should consult the Office of the Registrar, the Law School Bulletin, and/or the full list of course offerings.

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Antitrust and Trade Regulation (739) is a survey of the common law and statutory regulation of the competitive practices and indsutrial structure of American business. Particular attention is devoted to the interpretation and administration of the Sherman, Clayton and Federal Trade Commission Acts. Patents, copyrights and trademarks are also considered. 3 credits.

Copyright Seminar (834) is an examination of the philosophical, psychological, and economic bases of the legal protection of intellectual and artistic works. Topics include the term and scope of protection, international protection, the relationship of copyright and the first amendment, the relationship of federal and state law in teh protection of copyrighted material, and the impact of technological change such as developments in computer technology, record piracy, and photocopying. 3 credits.

Cyberlaw, Special Topics (848) is a seminar providing intensive examination of a selected set of theoretical and/or practical issues concerning the rise of the global information network. Specific content varies, but there is s consistent focus on the interaction of legal developments and cultural change in this rapidly-developing field, as well as the important role academic scholarship can play in helping to shape public policy. Requirements include weekly 1-3 page reactions to the assigned readings, as well as a term paper on a topic mutually agreed upon between instructor and the student. The term paper may fulfill the Upperclass Writing Requirement. Please note that, because the course takes a cultural rather than technical approach to cyberspace issues, technical expertise or experience is not required.
Regulation in cyberspace does not consist only of laws issued and enforced by sovereigns. Instead, private parties, employing the technology of online interaction, will increasingly be able to regulate activity, which might potentially upset many of the provisional balances we as a society have struck in areas such as free speech, privacy, and intellectual property. The question then becomes: how do we evaluate this "private" regulation? Are constitutional norms applicable? Answering such questions requires a reinvestigation of legal doctrine and theory in this century concerning the distinction between "state action" (which is generally subject to constitutional constraints) and "private ordering" (which is not). Is such a distinction tenable? And if so, how is the line to be drawn in cyberspace? 3 credits.

Defamation, Privacy and Publicity (651) examines the rights attaching to personality interests. To what extent do individuals have the right to control the reputational aspect of personality; to exercise freedom from public exposure, and to authorize commercial use of his or her identity? Beyond the increasingly important role that such rights play in an information society, the subject of this seminar provides a laboratory for looking at the way new rights are created and sustained. Are the rights discussed in the course grounded in the Constitution, common law, or statutory innovation? Defamation has its roots in the common law of slander, privacy rights are traced (in modern American law) to the search of Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis (1890) for a common law of privacy, and the rights of publicity emerged from a privacy tort to a vested property right of commercial exploitation of one's own likeness. 3 credits.

Entertainment Law (870) explores many of the legal, business and policy issues which a lawyer encounters in music, film, television and sports industries. Some of the topics which the course covers are intellectual property issues in the entertainment industry; conflict of interest and other legal ethics issues; contractual rights and relations among entertainment industry workers in television, motion pictures, and recordings, including agency and management agreements; an analysis of the economic structure of the entertainment industry; basics of film and television practice including financing, production and distribution arrangements and agreements; and a survey of the various unions and guilds having jurisdiction over the various personnel in the entertainment industry, incluidng the Writers Guild of America, Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Radio and Television Artists, American Federation of Musicians and Actors Equity. 3 credits.

Introduction to Copyright (734) explores how copyright has shaped our culture and how the legal underpinnings and emerging technology have shaped copyright. 3 credits.

Intellectual Property: An Introduction (715) is concerned with the legal regulation of mental products. It affects such diverse subjects as the visual and performing arts, new plant varieties,electronic databases, advertising, insulin producing bacteria, and video games. This course seeks to mix practice-directed material with public policy concerns. It will approach intellectual property as a regulatory system, balancing incentives to foster human creativity while at the same time seeking not to unduly restrict its diffusion. Since intellectual property is such a dynamic, rapidly changing area of law, many of the cases and statutes discussed are of quite recent vintage. In order for the course material not to become obsolete within just a few years, the organizing focus of the course is conceptual (upon the core doctrines of intellectual property and how they are interconnected) and upon directly confronting the question of legal change itself-how are intellectual property regimes evolving? What new judicial and legislative developments are in the works? And how should we respond? 3 credits.

Intellectual Property in the European Union (835) will analyze the past and present intellectual property policies of the Commission of the European Communities and the European Court of Justice. Topics for discussion may include the concept of international exhaustion, the problem of paralell imports, and European Union harmonization efforts in the area of intellectual property. Readings for discussion will be taken from Commission decisions, Court of Justice opinions and law review articles. An intellectual property course must be taken prior to or concurrently with this course. Also helpful, but not required is the basic European Community Law course. 3 credits.

Intellectual Property Policy (XXX) will investigate the phenomenon of information flow: how information is created and disseminated, the legal incentives to create and protect information, and the public policy reasons for doing so. 3 credits.

Law and Technology: Computers and the Law (981) deals with selected issues invovling the general question of how the new technology is affecting, and is affected by, the law and the legal system. Each student undertakes a substantial project on a topic mutually agreed upon by the instructor and the student, and is required to report on or critique projects prepared by others. These projects may include research papers or the preparation of computer-assisted materials. Research papers may fulfill the Upperclass Writing Requirement. 3 credits.

Legal Regulation of Art and Public Culture Seminar (889) focuses largely upon public law issues surrounding the legal regulation of art, assigning particular attention to the problem of balancing the interests of owners, visual and performance artists, and the public in creating a system of legal governance. Among the topics examined are the protecton of art workds thorugh existing intellectual property regimes; obscenity, parody, and defamation; artists' moral and economic rights; museum board fiduciary responsibilities and deaccession; government fuding for the arts; reparation of stolen art; cultural property and issues of cultural identity; and the challenge of new technologies for art law. International and comparative aspects of art law will be addressed. The seminar is neither an entertainment law course nor a survey of private art law practice. 3 credits.

Patent Law and Procedure (716) looks at practice and procedure in preparation and prosecution of patent applications, including interferences, appeals, and patent conveyancing as well as the substantive law of patents, patent litigation, including patent antitrust problems, and license litigation. 3 credits.

Trademark Law (939) considers legal and policy problems in the law of trademarks through case analysis and examination of the Lanham Act. Topics include marks subject to protection, the federal registration process, likelihood of confusion, "palming off," and remedies. 3 credits.

Adjacent Course List:

Administrative Law
Antitrust & Trade Regulation
Problems in Antitrust
Arbitration
Business Planning
Comparative Law
Conflict of Laws
Freedom of Speech
Contemporary Legal Theory
Development of the Regulatory State
Energy Law
European Community Law & Institutions
Federal Courts
International Economic Law
Jurisprudence
Law & Economics
Legislative Process
Media & the Law
Negotiation
Privacy in Cyberspace
Regulated Industries: Energy & Telecommunications
Right to Privacy
Sports & the Law
Statutory Interpretation