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: MGH 238
Contact: dugan at cs dot washington dot edu
Office Hour: Wednesday, 2:30-3:30 Allen Center 280.

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

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 changes to U.S. patent law under the America Invents Act of 2011 in addition to recent Supreme Court decisions. 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 studied, including copyright, trademark, and trade secret law. The course will balance the discussion of practical legal considerations with broader policy questions, including limits and reforms to intellectual property regimes (e.g., in time, scope, subject matter), the relationship between innovation and intellectual property regimes, and the like.

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

Homework

HW #1: Reading Patents (Due: In class, April 22, 2015) PDF
HW #2: Provisional Applications and Patent Prosecution (Due: In class, May 6, 2015) PDF
HW #3: Claim Drafting (Due: In class, May 20, 2015) PDF
HW #4: Patent Searching (Due: In class, June 3, 2015) PDF

Required Texts and Papers

Course reader, under development. I've compiled and edited a number of relevant readings into a single volume.
Google's PageRank Patent
The Twitter Patent
Dugan, Derivative Works Under the GPL, updated 2011.
Open Source Licenses:
Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l (Supreme Ct. 2014).
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

Adelman, et al., Patent Law In A Nutshell, 2nd Ed., Thomson West Publishing, 2012 (ISBN-10: 0314279997).
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: multi_cse490t_sp15@u.washington.edu. You can also view the list archives.

Grading

This is a CR/NC course. To receive credit, 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, things like: read and briefly summarize a patent, design around a claim, perform a patent search, research and report on a patent litigation, and the like.