Greg R. Vetter
A seminar course to study the process of writing a large work and to study advanced topics in intellectual property or information law, typically within trade secrets, patents, trademark, copyright, or information law topics such as privacy, data security, licensing, cyberlaw or internet law. The study is through authorship of a seminar paper that meets the Law Center's upper level writing requirement.
Before the Fall 2016 final exam period ends, please send me an email so I have your email address. This allows me to correspond with you about your topic selection process. In that email, include the best phone number where I can reach you, typically your cell phone number.
| Name: | Advanced Topics in Intellectual Property |
| Course # / Section #: | 7397 / 25111 |
| UHLC Course Listing: | http://www.law.uh.edu/schedule/class_information.asp?cid=14434 |
| Place: | 209 BLB |
| Time: | Tuesday and Thursday, 4:00 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. (2 class sessions per week, 3 credit hours) The course schedule with class meeting times is here. |
| Required Text: | Eugene Volokh, Academic Legal Writing (4th ed. 2010) ("ALW") |
| Prerequisites | Patent law or copyright law or intellectual property survey or permission of the instructor. |
| Grading: | The seminar paper is graded at each point of submittal. Details are given in a document linked below, but grading includes a component that is sensitive to adherence with process and deadlines. |
| Brief Description of Coverage: | Assignments from ALW are front-loaded and are specified in the course schedule linked below. |
| Topic approval deadline: | I must approve your topic by Friday, 1/13/2017, which means I need to receive it before then, preferably many days before then, which gives time for you to adjust it if necessary; but, at the latest, please send it to me no later than Wednesday, 1/11/2017. Please begin researching your topic (and reading the relevant parts of ALW) as soon as your Fall 2016 semester finals are complete. Please see the discussion on Topic Selection below. That research can, and probably should, include communication with me about your topic ideas. Ideally, much of that communication happens during the second half of December 2016. |
| First week assignment: | For the first day of class, 1/17/2017, read this course web page and the items linked to it, and re-read Part I of ALW. Be prepared to tell the class your topic on 1/17/2017, along with about 2 or 3 minutes of explanation about the topic and why you chose it. For the second day of class, 1/19/2017, read Parts II through VII of ALW. |
| Audio Recording of Class Sessions | I may audio tape some of the class sessions using a portable recorder attached to my person and post links to the audio tracks on the class web site for the sole and limited educational purpose of allowing students to stream the recorded sessions to review or to enable students who missed a class to hear the class presentation. Any audio tracks created will be deleted and destroyed shortly after the final exam for the class. Since I call on students, there is a slight chance that your contributions to class discussion, whether voluntary or while on call, may be included in the audio recording. The chance is slight because the recording technology I use does a poor job of picking up any voices other than my own. Your continued registration in this class indicates your acquiescence to any such incidental recording for the purposes described above unless, if you have concerns about this, you come speak with me as soon as possible but in no event later than the first day of the second week of class. |
| Research and Drafting (R&D) Day(s) | Please see the course schedule link below. |
| Presentation Day(s) | 4/18/2017, 4/20/2017, 4/25/2017 |
| ADA | Whenever possible, and in accordance with 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the University of Houston will attempt to provide reasonable academic accommodations to students who request and require them. Please contact student services for more information. |
| UHLC MediaSite link for catalog of class recordings (cougarnet credentials required for access): | http://uh.mediasite.com/mediasite/Catalog/catalogs/law-ipseminar-vetter |
| Zoom meeting link: | https://uhlc.zoom.us/j/499962396 |
| Selected Class Audio Recordings | |
| Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2017 | Jan. 17 |
| Jan. 19 | |
| Jan. 24 | |
| Feb. 7 | |
| Feb. 23 | |
| Mar. 28 | |
| Apr. 13 | |
| Access UH for course evaluation online: https://accessuh.uh.edu | |
These are posted on my home page at:
Although the link below is for a slightly different situation, it has relevant input for topic selection for a seminar paper. Please read it.
http://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/gvetter/documents/StudentJournalPaperTopicSelection.Prof.Vetter1c.5.1.2005.pdf
Also, for topic selection, please read Part I (pages 10 to 39) in ALW - "Finding What to Write About (The Claim)"
For the seminar course, your topic needs to be approved by me. It is a research topic of the kind a judge or law firm partner would assign, with a product that reports the authorities. The focus of the writing is not an essay on your views.
Besides the considerations in the link above, consider these remarks for structuring the paper as an article (not as a “case note”) around a particular case:
Use a recent (past 5 years or so) case of interest. You can then collect the statutory provisions involved, earlier cases in the same area, and follow-on cases that have come down. High-visibility cases, such as recent Supreme Court decisions, are generally not advisable: (1) they have already been written to death by other scholars; and (2) they impair your ability to get your paper published after the semester ends, if that is of interest to you.
If you like (but there is no obligation to do so), send me your CV and I can consider your background as a part of discussing possible topics with you.
Also, consider for a topic those areas of IP from past courses in which you are particularly interested in expanding your knowledge.
Email me a status update about your topic selection by 12/21/2016. You ideally have already had some communication with me about your topic before this date, but with or without such, send a status update by the deadline of 12/21. You may have settled on a particular topic and are in the process of narrowing it, or you might still have a handful of alternatives. Regardless, report your status to me.
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As much as you can, during topic selection, try to read abstracts of written papers. Reading a few each day from IP professor authors at www.ssrn.com is a great place to start.
For example, read the abstracts of the patent law articles by Professor Cotropia, the link to which is here. For a copyright law professor example, try Professor Reese, whose SSRN link is here. For a trademark law example, try Professor McKenna, whose SSRN link is here.
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To submit your topic, email it to me. For example:
Subject: Topic for IP seminar, Spring 2017
Professor Vetter:
My seminar paper topic is: The utility doctrine in patent law as applied to the genetics technology of expressed sequence tags (ESTs): the situation since In re Fisher (Fed. Cir. 2005).
A topic is not necessarily a paper title. Thus, don't worry about polishing the wording of the topic. That will come later when you fashion a title for the article. But, make sure the topic is sufficiently narrowed in law and in fact so as to be manageable - which typically means no more than several dozen directly on-point cases, and a few law review articles in the area.
The course schedule is here.
Here is the Writing Requirements document about how to construct, write and submit the paper, and how it will be graded in the context of a seminar course.
Law Center plagiarism policy.
Law Center policy for seminar paper to meet writing requirement.
{ more items possibly forthcoming}
Professor Post's writing guidelines:
http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/dpost/guidelines.pdf
{ more possibly forthcoming}
See Part VII of ALW. This is not assigned reading.
Here are additional resources for paper publishing:
http://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/gvetter/documents/StudentPaperPublishingResources.htm