IP transactions: a possible Masters course

The IPKat has his own ideas about Masters
(nb Master Cat mousepad available here)
The IPKat's friend, fellow blogger, author and former student Mark Anderson mentioned to him earlier this year that he was very keen to develop a Masters (LLM) programme, which could provide an attractive alternative to the Intellectual Property Diploma course, now hosted at Oxford. The Oxford course is very popular -- but it is heavily focused on IP litigation, whereas Mark would like to see a course, whether an entire LLM programme or just a module of an existing programme, for IP transactions.

The IPKat suggested to Mark that he sketch out a syllabus so that it could be posted on this weblog together with an invitation to readers to make critically constructive comments and/or give an idea as to whether this would be the sort of thing they'd like to do themselves or send a colleague on. Mark has done this: his suggested syllabus can be read here.

You can post comments on Mark's proposed syllabus below, if you want to share them with other readers or induce them to respond -- or you can email them to Mark directly here, with the subject line "IP Syllabus".  It would be helpful to receive comments by Friday 19 August, which gives you a month to get your thoughts together!

For what it's worth, this Kat is convinced that IP lawyers can't get enough education on transactional skills. The pages of this weblog are littered with reports on cases arising from the wreck of badly drafted contracts. Merpel adds: some litigation lawyers seem to think they're immune from needing to know anything about transactions, but isn't that why so many settlement agreements seem to come unstuck? She's glad Mark's syllabus will address this dire area of practice.
IP transactions: a possible Masters course IP transactions: a possible Masters course Reviewed by Jeremy on Friday, July 22, 2011 Rating: 5

5 comments:

  1. I cannot resist the temptation of advertising the Nottingham Trent University Post Graduate Diploma in Commercial IP, which we have now been running each year since 2004. It uses Trent's well established "learning by doing" techniques to teach IP law. And it seeks to maintain a balance between contentious and non-contentious aspects (so not as focused on transactional practice as Mark's proposal, but including a significant amount of work in that area). I have always felt that the fully developed IP lawyer should have at least a grounding in both aspects. Maybe Mark's very interesting ideas should make me have a rethink.
    The Diploma can be converted into a Master's degree, incidentally. Full details at http://www.ntu.ac.uk/apps/pss/course_finder/60583-1/3/PGDip_Commercial_Intellectual_Property.aspx?source=ga507
    Chris Ryan, Part time consultant to the Nottingham Law School at Nottingham Trent University

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  2. @Chris, you never need to resist temptation when it's a matter of enriching the understanding and general knowledge of the IPKat's readers (and, dare it be said, authors ...)

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  3. Santa Clara University School of Law has an LLP program focused on IP transactions (although with a U.S. focus) that might be useful in putting this together. You can find the coursework they follow here:http://law.scu.edu/graduate/llm-intellectual-property-courses.cfm

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  4. Thanks, Judith, I have bookmarked the page for future reference.

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  5. I have had some very positive responses so far, from a range of leading commercial firms, including:

    (a) leading City/international firm with over 200 partners;
    (b) leading national/international firm with over 300 partners;
    (c) leading media firm with over 50 partners;

    and several individual practitioners. The more responses I get, the more evidence I have when discussing with prospective host universities, so please keep them coming!

    Thanks

    Mark

    ReplyDelete

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