Intellectual Property Concentration

IP Concentration Professors | IP Concentration Courses | IP Concentration Frequently Asked Questions

The Intellectual Property Concentration is designed to better prepare students who wish to practice in the intellectual property field. It is also designed to create a sense of community among committed intellectual property students and the intellectual property faculty, facilitating networks for support and encouragement during students’ time at UC Hastings and beyond, into their careers. UC Hastings’ connections with Silicon Valley’s technology conglomeration, California's art and entertainment industries, and San Francisco’s vibrant intellectual property firms uniquely position it to offer perspectives from all aspects of the practice. IP concentration students are offered courses taught by practitioners from boutique and multi-national firms and in-house counsel, in addition to full-time UC Hastings faculty.

Students are first required to learn the basics: Copyright, Trademarks, and Patents.

Students may then take courses from the array of electives and skills-based offerings. These electives enable students to gravitate toward one area of Intellectual Property law, such as Patents, while the required courses guarantee that they will be competent to practice in other intellectual property fields, as is likely to occur during the course of their careers.

The Concentration culminates during a student’s third year with the IP Concentration Capstone Seminar. The Concentration Capstone is designed to integrate what students have learned in the core and elective courses and invite them to consider what lies ahead. The seminar explores the challenges posed by globalization and technological advances that will shape intellectual property law during the next several decades, and considers how the current intellectual property regime is likely to change in response.

Advisors:  Professor Margreth Barrett, Professor Robin Feldman, Professor Jeff Lefstin, Professor Ben DePoorter

Lead advisor for 2010-11 academic year: Professor Jeff Lefstin

TOTAL UNITS REQUIRED: 22

A. Required Courses (11-13 hours)

I.  Core regime courses:

(a) Copyright Law (3)
    Patents & Trade Secrets (3)
    Trademarks & Unfair Competition (3)

- or - 

(b) Intellectual Property (4) and at least one of the courses listed under (a)

II.  At least one licensing or prosecution course:

Intellectual Property Licensing Seminar (2)
Patent Prosecution Seminar (2)
Trademark Prosecution Seminar (2)

III.  Intellectual Property Capstone Concentration Seminar (2)

B. Qualifying IP and IP-related Electives [9 – 11 hours]  Classes that are taken to meet the concentration core requirement may not also be counted toward the elective requirement.

I. IP Electives:

Administrative Law (3) 
Advanced Topics in Patent Law  (2)
Antitrust & Intellectual Property Seminar (2)
Bioethics Law & Society Seminar (2)
Cyberlaw Seminar (2)
Copyright Law (3)
Data Privacy Law (2)
Digital Media Law (2)
Entertainment Law (2)
Intellectual Property Licensing Seminar (2)
Intellectual Property Under State Law: Trade Secrets & Employee Mobility (2)
International & Comparative Intellectual Property (2)
Law and Bioscience (3)
Modern Bioethics: From Nuremburg to the "Octomom" and Beyond (3 or 4)
Patent Litigation (2)
Patent Prosecution Seminar (2)
Patents and Trade Secrets (3)
Social Networks, Portable Devices, and Third Party Content Law (2)
Trademark Prosecution Seminar (2)
Trademarks and Unfair Competition (3)
Venture Capital & the Start-Up Company (2)

II. Non-IP elective (a maximum of ONE of the following elective courses may be counted toward meeting the elective requirement:

Antitrust (3 or 4) (a student may not count both
    Antitrust and Antitrust & IP towards electives)
Business Associations (4)
Corporations (3 or 4)
Federal Courts (3)
Health Law (3)
International Business Transactions (3)
Law and Economics Seminar (2)
Political Economy of Law Seminar (2)

Click Here to Download these Requirements in a PDF Document (78 KB)