Intellectual Property
The field of intellectual property law includes the legal regimes that protect the intangible creations of inventors, authors, and marketers. The primary bodies of intellectual property law are patent, copyright, and trademark. Patent law confers and regulates rights in the products and processes created by inventors. Copyright law confers and regulates rights in works created by authors and artists, such as books, music, movies, artworks, and many others. Trademark law confers and regulates rights in words and symbols that identify the source of a good or service.
Lawyers who specialize in intellectual property law practice in a wide variety of institutional settings—including private law firms large and small, in-house legal departments, government agencies, and public interest organizations—and do many different kinds of legal work—including litigating cases, prosecuting applications for patents and trademarks, negotiating and documenting transactions, counseling clients, and making policy.
The significance of intellectual property in the U.S. and world economies has grown dramatically in recent decades, and UC Irvine Law offers substantial opportunities for students interested in this increasingly important field.
Courses
Several foundational courses cover the major areas of the field—Introduction to Intellectual Property; Copyright Law; Patent Law; and Trademark Law. The Introduction to Intellectual Property course is a survey course that provides some exposure to each area, but in much less depth than the individual foundational courses in Patent Law, Copyright Law, and Trademark Law.
To explore the field beyond the foundational courses, a number of advanced courses and seminars are available, including Digital Copyright; Entertainment Law; Cross-Border Trade in Intellectual Property; Technical Protection of Author’s Rights; and Antitrust and Intellectual Property Rights. In addition, students can pursue directed research projects on topics of interest under the supervision of one of the faculty members who specialize in intellectual property.
Clinic
In UC Irvine Law’s Intellectual Property, Arts & Technology Clinic, students work to protect civil liberties and support innovation in the digital age by advising and representing clients on a range of matters dealing with copyright, patent, privacy and media law. Additionally, some projects undertaken by the Community Economic Development Clinic have involved copyright and trademark issues.
Additional Opportunities
Opportunities in intellectual property law at UC Irvine Law go beyond the classroom. The law school has hosted short-term visiting faculty from overseas who specialize in intellectual property and have presented their work to student audiences, and the UCI Long US-China Institute has pursued a multi-year collaborative research project on intellectual property issues.
Two student organizations, the Intellectual Property & Cyberlaw Society and the Entertainment Law Society, organize events for students interested in the area. Faculty working in the field hire students as research assistants to help with cutting-edge research. And students have participated in the First Amendment and Media Law Diversity Moot Court Competition, sponsored by the ABA Forum on Communications Law, which has involved issues of copyright law.
UC Irvine School of Law also regularly hosts major international conferences on intellectual property and related issues of high technology.