Syllabus and Assignments
Week 1: Chapter 1 and pages 953-61. You may also wish to familiarize yourself with the contents of Appendix B in the Supplement (pages 509-36) if you would like background information about what software is and how it is written.
After this introduction to Intellectual Property and to software, we will proceed to a consideration of the major forms of intellectual property which may be used to protect against misappropriation of intellectual property. In each case, we will discuss the general principles and rules of a particular form of intellectual property protection and will then turn to the application of those concepts and rules to software law. This approach requires that adjacent assignments may come from quite different sections of the casebook. Please make careful note, therefore, of this list of assignments.
Please be prepared to discuss text, statutes and problems contained in the assignments.
Weeks 2 and 3 (classes 3 - 6): Trade Secret Law. In these 4 class meetings, we will take up Trade Secret law in general (Chapter 2) and then examine its application to software.
Class 3: pages 33 - 58Class 4: pages 58-80
Class 5 : pages 80 - 104
Class 6: pages 105 - 115 and 961 - 68
Weeks 4 - 8 (classes 7 - 16) Copyright Law
Class 7: pages 367 - 95
Class 8: pages 395 - 415
Class 9: pages 458 - 83
Class 10: pages 483 - 98; 503 - 06; 968 - 72
Class 11: pages 972 - 88
Class 12: pages 988 - 1005
Class 13: pages 1006 - 16; 506 - 19
Class 14: pages 525 - 39; 1016 - 21
Class 15: pages 1021 - 43
Class 16: pages 564 - 73, Copyright Act Sec. 1201,
catchup and review