Intellectual Property Law for Engineers

CSE490T/590T: Intellectual Property Law for Engineers

Administrative

Instructor: Ben Dugan
Schedule: Wednesday, 3:30-5:20
Credit: 2 units CR/NC
Location: CSE 403
Contact: dugan at cs dot washington dot edu
Office Hour: Wednesday, 2:30-3:30 Allen Center 212.

This page is constantly under revision, and is one of my primary means of communicating with you. No Twitter feeds here. So please check back often.

Course Description

Perplexed, annoyed, or interested in patents? Confused by copyright laws? This course provides a survey of intellectual property law for a technical (non-legal) audience. The purpose of the course is to assist engineers and scientists in navigating and utilizing various intellectual property regimes effectively in the business context. In the patent space, we will study the significant revisions of U.S. patent law under the America Invents Act of 2011, including the change from a first-to-invent to a first-to-file patent system and new post-grant review procedures. Additional patent-related topics will include patent preparation and prosecution, claim interpretation, and assessing patent validity and infringement. Other intellectual property areas will also be addressed, including copyright, trademark, and trade secret law. The course will balance the discussion of practical legal considerations with broader policy questions (e.g., should certain subject matter be off limits for patenting? the relationship between innovation and intellectual property regimes, etc.).

Prerequisites: The course is open to graduate students and 4th-year College of Engineering students. Many of the cases and teaching examples will be situated in the computer arts, so some background in computer science or engineering is preferred. In the unlikely event that the course is over-subscribed, a simple application process may be used to select participants.

Course Topics

See the ever changing course schedule.

Slides/Handouts

Week 1: Survey of IP Law
Week 2: Reading a Patent
Week 3: Patent Prosecution, Provisional Applications, Priority, Foreign Rights
Week 4: Conditions for Patentability
Week 5: Claim Drafting
Week 6: Patent Analysis
Week 7: Copyright & Open Source Licenses
Week 8: Software Patents
Week 9: Patent Reform
Week 10: Wrapup

Homework

HW #1: Understanding Patents (Due: In class, April 24, 2013) HTML
HW #2: Provisional Applications and Patent Prosecution (Due: In class, May 8, 2013) HTML
HW #3: Claim Drafting (Due: In class, May 22, 2013) HTML
HW #4: Patent Searching (Due: In class, June 5, 2013) HTML

Required Texts and Papers

Adelman, et al., Patent Law In A Nutshell, 2nd Ed., Thomson West Publishing, 2012 (ISBN-10: 0314279997).
Google's PageRank Patent
The Twitter Patent
Copyright Office, Copyright Basics, 2012.
Dugan, Derivative Works Under the GPL, updated 2011.
Open Source Licenses:
CLS Bank Int'l v. Alice Corp. (Fed. Cir. 2012).
Merges, Six Impossible Patents Before Breakfast, 1999.
This American Life: When Patents Attack
Senate Bill: Patent Abuse Reduction Act

Recommended Texts or Resources

Rockman, Intellectual Property Law for Engineers and Scientists, Wiley-IEEE, 1st Ed., 2004 (a good book, although the law is now somewhat outdated).
Mueller, Patent Law, 4th Ed., Aspen, 2012. Other introductory legal texts would also work.
Open Source Initiative

Communication

Send me email -- I try to respond within 24 hours, usually sooner. We'll also use the course email list: cse490t_sp13@u.washington.edu. You can also view the list archives.

Grading

This is a pass/fail course. To pass, you will need to:

Attend class.
Do the readings.
Participate. If you don't ask or answer questions, then you likely aren't participating.
Do the assignments -- yes, there will be small assignments. As the class is somewhat expiremental in nature, I will be asking you to help me determine what types of assignments are appropriate for this type of course. Possible example assignments include: read and briefly summarize a patent, design around a claim, perform a patent search, research and report on a patent litigation, and the like.

Course (Self) Evaluation.

The following are some common areas of interface between engineers and the law. The course, if effective, will enable the student to be more effective in navigating one or more of these.

Patent law: reading and understanding patents for legal effect and as prior art; invention mining / portfolio development; assisting in patent preparation (invention disclosure, patent drafting); patent prosecution (explaining the prior art); patent analysis (claim construction, prior art analysis)
Copyright law: open source license selection and impact, copyright registration
Contract issues: understanding and negotiating employment-related IP-rights assignment agreements; understanding and using non-disclosure agreements