CopyrightX -- Final Examination Format

Prof. William Fisher

Harvard Law School

To The Participants in CopyrightX (Spring 2013):

The final examination in this course will be distributed at noon GMT on Saturday, May 11, and will be due at noon GMT on Sunday, May 12. The exam should take approximately four hours to complete. We are providing a 24-hour "window" during which the exam may be completed to accommodate your diverse time zones, schedules, and commitments. If it is impossible for you to take the exam during this window, contact your teaching fellow and we will arrange some kind of accommodation.

The exam will be "open book" in the sense that, when preparing your answers, you may read, watch, or rely upon any material whatsoever. After the exam begins, however, you may not consult in any way with any other person concerning any aspect of the exam.

The exam will contain three questions:

• The first question will describe a hypothetical series of events and will ask you to explain the legal rights of each of the people or organizations involved in that series of events. When answering this question, you will be asked to rely exclusively upon the copyright law of the United States. All of the information necessary to answer this question well is contained in the twelve recorded lectures by Professor Fisher. The question will be deisgned to test your comprehension of the principal rules of US copyright law and will not require you to know fine-grained details. Your answer to this question may not exceed 1500 words. 40% of your grade will be based upon your answer to this question.
• The second question will ask you to compare US copyright law with the copyright law in one other country with respect to a specific issue. The question will identify four significant issues (all of which you will have studied) and will ask you to select one of the four. You will then be asked to describe, briefly, how the issue is addressed under US law and how it is addressed under the law of another country. For this purpose, you will be free to choose any non-US country. Finally, you will be asked which of the two approaches, in your judgment, is superior and why. Your answer to this question may not exceed 1000 words. 30% of your grade will be based upon your answer to this question.
• The third question will test your knowledge of copyright theory. The question will provide you various options in order to afford you considerable freedom in selecting the theory or theories that you find most persuasive and in justifying your opinion. Your answer to this question may not exceed 1000 words. 30% of your grade will be based upon your answer to this question.

Your answers will be evaluated by one of the teaching fellows associated with the CopyrightX course -- but not by your own teaching fellow. The teaching fellow will assess each question using the following scale:

• 5: Excellent
• 4: Insightful
• 3: Good
• 2: Satisfactory
• 1: Unsatisfactory

To determine your aggregate grade: the evaluation you receive on Question #1 will be multiplied by 4; the evaluation you receive on Question #2 will be multiplied by 3; the evaluation you receive on Question #3 will be multiplied by 3; and those products will then be added together. The maximum possible score will be 50. To pass the exam, you must receive a cumulative score of at least 20.

The primary purpose of the exam is to assess your competence, not to make comparisons among you. If you have participated in the course conscientiously, and if you review the material before the exam, you should have no difficulty obtaining a passing grade.

If you have any questions concerning this format, please contact your teaching fellow.

--The CopyrightX Team

Version 1.0

Last modified: March 12, 2013