Summer Programs for Law Students

This course studies intellectual property ("IP") issues as it applies in a specific business context. When viewed in a business context, the role of IP in markets and industries can be systematically analyzed. Students will explore the different roles that IP plays in various stages of business activity, ranging from the start-up phase of business formation to successful operation, mergers or acquisitions, initial public offerings, and other advanced business transactions. At the conclusion of this course, students should demonstrate a working knowledge of the basic elements of intellectual property law, including patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secret law as it applies to the business organization with a focus on the entrepreneur and startup companies.

With practicing lawyers in mind, this course not only explores meaning and interpretation of various constitutional and statutory provisions but also explores meaning and interpretation of contracts and other private law documents and instruments drawn from actual practice. Exploring interpretation and meaning of such real-world documents and instruments requires more than just studying canons of construction. It also requires exploring: (1) how legal language is a system of interrelated signs (an area of study called semiotics); (2) how various levels of legal meaning tie into or fail to tie into real-world experience (an area of study called semantics); (3) how speaker meaning can differ from literal meaning and what this means in actual practice (an area of study called pragmatics); (4) how linguistic success and failure can in large part turn on framing, categories, metaphors, and narratives lawyers wittingly or unwittingly use; and (5) how context in its various forms not only drives meaning but also determines any operative text itself. Facility in all these areas is essential to both litigation and transactional practice.