Advanced Intellectual Property Law

William Fisher

May 2010

This one-week course will examine in depth five controversial issues in intellectual-property law. We will compare the ways in which different countries address these issues -- and will consider the insights that can be gleaned from current legal scholarship. All of the course materials will be available online. The syllabus is set forth below.

The Health Crisis in the Developing World (Monday)

• Required Reading:
  • Fisher & Syed, "A Prize as a Partial Solution to the Health Crisis in the Developing World" (2009)
• Suggested Reading:
  • William Fisher & Talha Syed, "Global Justice in Health Care: Developing Drugs for the Developing World," 40 UC Davis Law Review 581 (2007)
  • The Health Impact Fund: Making New Medicines Accessible for All (2008)
  • Fisher & Rigamonti, Case Study on the South Africa AIDS Controversy

The Crisis in the Entertainment Industry (Tuesday)

• Suggested Reading:
  • William Fisher, Promises to Keep: Technology, Law and the Future of Entertainment (Stanford University Press 2004), Chapter 6
  • Mark Lemley & R. Anthony Reese, "Reducing Copyright Infringement Without Restricting Innovation," 56 Stan. L. Rev. 1345, 1345-54, 1373-1426 (2004)
  • Salil K. Mehra, "The iPod Tax: Why the Digital Copyright System of American Law Professors' Dreams Failed in Japan," 79 U. Colo. L. Rev. 421 (2008)
  • Guy Pessach, "An International-Comparative Perspective on Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing and Third Party Liability in Copyright Law: Framing the Past, Present, and Next Generations' Questions," 40 Vand. J. Transnat'l L. 87 (2007)

Fashion (Wednesday)

• Required Reading:
  • Jeannie Suk and Scott Hemphill, "The Law, Culture, and Economics of Fashion" (Stanford Law Review 2009)
• Suggested Reading:
  • Kal Raustiala & Christopher Sprigman, "The Piracy Paradox: Innovation and Intellectual Property in Fashion Design," 92 Va. L. Rev. 1687 (2006)
  • Counterfeit Chic (roam around the site for a bit)
  • Barton Beebe, "Intellectual Property and the Sumptuary Code," 123 Harvard Law Review 809 (2010)

Civil Rights for the Internet in Brazil

• Required Reading:
  • MINUTA DE ANTEPROJETO DE LEI PARA DEBATE COLABORATIVO SEÇÃO IV REVISADA

Traditional Knowledge (Thursday)

• Required Reading:
  • Stephen Munzer and Kal Raustiala, "The Uneasy Case for Traditional Knowledge," 27 Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal 37 (2009)
• Suggested Reading:
  • Anupam Chander & Madhavi Sunder, "The Romance of the Public Domain," 92 California Law Review 1331 (2004)
  • Kristen A. Carpenter, Sonia Katyal, and Angela Riley, "In Defense of Property," 118 Yale L.J. 1022 (2009)
  • Antonio C. Guedes and Maria Jose Sampaio, "Genetic Resources and Traditional Knowledge in Brazil" (2000)

Exhaustion (Friday)

• Required Reading:
  • William Fisher, "When Should We Permit Differential Pricing of Information?," 55 UCLA Law Review 1 (2007)
• Suggested Reading:
  • Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, 128 S.Ct. 2109 (2008)

For background information concerning the current rules in Copyright, Patent, and Trademark Law, students may find it useful to consult the attached maps.

last revised: May 7, 2010