Comments on: Learning IP law for lawyer wannabes

Question: Learning IP law for lawyer wannabes

brett — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 08:24:11 -0800

How can I learn about intellectual property law before I go to law school?

I have a job where anything I know about trademark, patent, and/or especially copyright law can be put to good use. Law school is probably in the cards for me in a couple of years, but I'd like to learn more about these areas now. Wikipedia seems a little hit-or-miss, and of course I can search for other places to try, but I don't have a sense of what's reputable. What resources would you suggest to help me get started? Books to read, blogs to follow -- I'm up for pretty much anything relevant. I'm even willing to consider buying a textbook if people tell me it's the way to go. Any recommendations are appreciated; thanks in advance.

By: crush-onastick

crush-onastick — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 08:29:02 -0800

trying to learn law before law school won't actually help you in law school. that said, the corante copyfight blog is quite good. and larry lessig's blog. Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity by Siva Vaidhyanathan is an excellent primer.

more academically, anything by julie cohen is a good read.

By: ambrosia

ambrosia — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 08:52:48 -0800

The kind of textbooks used in Intellectual Property courses in law school wouldn't really be of much use as reference. You might want to check out the IP Hornbook instead. Hornbooks are pricey, so if you have access to a law library you might want to try that first, or go down to the bookstore at your local law school and flip through it before buying.

By: bitdamaged

bitdamaged — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 09:14:40 -0800

Nolo

By: mattbucher

mattbucher — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 09:20:29 -0800

I second the Vaidhyanathan book.

By: Not in my backyard

Not in my backyard — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 09:37:54 -0800

Try Patently-O. Disclaimer: I'm the marketing director for Dennis's law firm.

By: randomstriker

randomstriker — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 09:40:15 -0800

Check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation...one-sided as it may be.

By: Carbolic

Carbolic — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 09:42:05 -0800

The West Nutshell series are a step down from the typical Hornbook but are less expensive. I find them a good place to start when I begin researching an area of the law with which I am not already familiar. I was going to suggest outlines like Gilbert or Emanuel but they aren't very useful other than when used as a supplement to reading the case book when actually taking the course (Be warned. Some professors take a very dim view of such outlines and bristle when they see them in the classroom.)

By: miss meg

miss meg — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 11:20:04 -0800

Willamette University runs a weekly mailing list which describes the holdings from recently decided IP cases, which is very helpful when you are trying to keep up with the changes in the law. Also, I agree with Carbolic about the Nutshell series - they are concise and extremely helpful. Hornbooks can be a bit too much for even law students :)

By: Saucy Intruder

Saucy Intruder — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 12:15:48 -0800

Larry Lessig's The Future of Ideas is a very well written, accessible overview of contemporary problems with copyright law in the Internet age. I would start there.

If you are interested in the entertainment industry, This Business of Music by Kravilovsky et al. focuses on the intersection of intellectual property law and the music recording business.

Stay away from hornbooks aimed at helping law students pass their final exams. And dear god stay away from Wikipedia at all costs.

By: footnote

footnote — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 13:04:08 -0800

How exactly will your knowledge be put to use? What specific tasks are you going to do? Without knowing that, it's hard to know what you should learn. Go ahead and learn the very basics with a Nutshell or other hornbook; but you'll have to inevitably get into the specifics of your task, which will require access to Westlaw or a law library. I don't think blogs and recently decided big cases are going to be that useful unless they happen to intersect with the exact task at hand.

By: iam2bz2p

iam2bz2p — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 14:00:41 -0800

A friend of mine recently graduated and takes excellent notes:

Here's others who share law school notes: (click the Notes tabs at the top)

I'd imagine this kind of stuff is very Google-able.

By: iam2bz2p

iam2bz2p — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 14:03:27 -0800

A friend of mine recently graduated and takes excellent notes: http://jerrybrito.com/writings/lawschool/

And another fine source: http://www.gonzagasba.com/

PS-- The hyperlinks did not work in my last post! Ack!

By: raf

raf — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 06:20:54 -0800

In general, I like the books in this series for what you need to do. They're thin paperbacks that summarize an area of law without reading individual cases or going into the most obscure minutia. They're great for learning all-of-x in a few hours. I've never used the IP ones, though.

(FTR, I disagree with crush-onastick that learning about the law before law school isn't helpful. I read a lot of cases before law school (not trying to prepare; just out of interest) and it helped a lot when I started law school because I had a sense of how cases were put together and what some of the terminology meant. Law school has a big learning curve, and being able to preempt some of it is helpful. But then books like the one I recommend above aren't helpful in this sense; reading Supreme Court cases is.)