Intellectual Property Concentration Courses

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW

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.

Advisor: Professor Jeffrey Lefstin

TOTAL UNITS REQUIRED: 22

A. Required Courses (10-21 units)

I. Core regime courses:

(a) Copyright Law (3)

Patents & Trade Secrets (3)

Trademarks & Unfair Competition (3)

- or -

(b) Intellectual Property (4) or 1L Statutory: Intellectual Property (3), and at least one of the courses listed under (a)

II. At least one transactional course:

• Intellectual Property Licensing Seminar (2)
• Patent Prosecution Seminar (2)
• Protecting Trademarks in Tech (1)
• Trademark Prosecution Seminar (2)
• Startup Legal Garage Biotech (10)
• Startup Legal Garage Tech (8)
• UC Hastings-Bucerius Summer Program in International IP Transactions (5)

III. Intellectual Property Capstone Concentration Seminar (2)

B. Qualifying IP and IP-related Electives

(1-12 units). Classes that are taken to meet the concentration core requirement may not also be counted toward the elective requirement.

I. IP Electives:

• Advanced Issues in Copyright Law Seminar (2)
• Current Topics in Patent Law (2)
• Antitrust & Intellectual Property Seminar (2)
• Copyright Law (3)
• Cyberlaw Seminar (2)
• Data Privacy Law (2)
• Digital Media Law (2)
• Entertainment Law (2)
• Genetics: Issues in Law & Policy Seminar (2)
• UC Hastings-Bucerius Summer Program in International IP Transactions (5)
• Startup Legal Garage Biotech (10)
• Startup Legal Garage Tech (8)
• Intellectual Property Licensing Seminar (2)
• Intellectual Property Under State Law: Trade Secrets & Employee Mobility (2)
• International & Comparative Intellectual Property (2)
• International Patent Law Seminar (2)
• Intersection of Human Rights, Economic Development and Intellectual Property Seminar (2)
• IP in Design in the Global Marketplace (1)
• Law & Bioscience Seminar (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)
• Protecting Trademarks in Tech (1)
• 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:

• Administrative Law (3)
• Antitrust (3 or 4) (a student may not count both Antitrust and Antitrust & IP towards electives)
• Biodiversity Law (3)
• Bioethics Law & Society Seminar (2)
• Business Associations (4)
• Corporations (3 or 4)
• Federal Courts (3)
• Health Care Providers, Patients and the Law (4)
• International Business Transactions (3)
• Law and Economics (3)
• Political Economy of Law Seminar (2)
• Protecting Trademarks in Tech (1)
• Social Enterprise & Economic Empowerment Clinic (6)
• Telecommunications Law Seminar (2)
• Transactional Law Practicum (3)
• U.S. Healthcare System and the Law (4)

The list of courses within the categories above is up to date as of the publication of this posting.  New courses are sometimes added to the curriculum subsequent to publication.  Therefore, if a student finds a course in the curriculum not listed above, but which the student thinks might count toward concentration requirements, the student should check with the concentration advisor regarding the eligibility of the course to satisfy concentration requirements.