Intellectual Property

The Intellectual Property course covers patents, copyright, design right, trademarks, passing off, and breach of confidence. We will only look at registered designs in broad outline. The course will also cover the remedies available in intellectual property, which are tactically important.

The syllabus aims to give you a good working knowledge of both the law and underlying theories in the various fields of study. By nature, intellectual property is highly detailed, but this subject seeks to reduce the detailed content to manageable proportions.

The program will also examine Statutory interpretation. Intellectual property is unique in the number of statutes with which one must cope. The ability to work with statutes is increasingly important in law, and is a highly transferable skill.

Unfair competition theory (which is at the heart of intellectual property) will also be introduced through study of the various rights.

Textbooks

The best general textbook is Cornish: Intellectual-Property, 3rd edition, 1996. An alternative is Bainbridge’s Intellectual-Property. A third possibility is Holyoak and Torremans’ Intellectual Property Law. For trade marks, Anand and Norman’s Blackstone Guide to the Trade

Marks Act 1995 or Firth’s Trade Marks, The New Law are recommended as supplementary reading.

Casebooks

Cornish’s Materials on Intellectual-Property contains an excellent selection of cases. An alternative is Bainbridge’s Cases and Materials in Intellectual-Property Law.