Intellectual property
Who owns an invention made by an employee? Should the law protect a search engine's algorithm? Can a local importer use a globaly brand? Does an internet meme infringe copyright? Intellectual Property used to be an issue that bothered only certain industries. Today, creative works, inventions, trade secrets, trademarks and designs are an inseparable part of our culture, commerce and our lives in general. The law protects intangible assets in several ways. The course will familiarize students with key constructs of intellectual property law and of the public domain, by way of studying the fundamental justifications of this field of law, and a critical analysis thereof. We will study the main sub-fields: trademarks, copyright and patents, and analyze their legal, cultural, economic and political aspects, and illustrate this by studying current debates, such as digital copyright, trademarks in a consumerist society, patents for human genome and methods of doing business, and more.