Guest Book Review: Teaching Intellectual Property Law

This is a book review of Teaching Intellectual Property Law: Strategy and Management edited by Sabine Jacques, Associate Professor in Information Technology, Media and Intellectual Property Law, University of East Anglia Law School and Ruth Soetendorp, Visiting Academic, City University of London and Professor Emerita, Bournemouth University. This review is kindly provided by Thorsten Lauterbach, Teaching Excellence Fellow at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, passionate about IP Law since he studied it as an undergraduate in the mid-1990s at Abertay Dundee. Here is what he says:

This edited collection brings together no fewer than 30 experienced contributors (Adrian Aronsson-Storrier, Hayleigh Bosher, Jocelyn Bosse, Rumyana Brestnichka, Caroline Coles, Mercedes Curto Polo, Catherine Davies, Janice Denoncourt, Brian Frye, Gabriele Gagliani, Helen Gubby, Mandy Haberman, Sabine Jacques, Smita Kheria, Fanny Koleva, Laurent Manderieux, Bartolomeo Meletti, Dinusha Mendis, Agathe Michel-de Cazotte, Miglena Molhova-Vladova, William Page, Andrew Penaluna, Kathryn Penaluna, Lisa Redman, Eleonora Rosati, Nick Scharf, Joe Sekhon, Ruth Soetendorp, Peter van Dongen, Andrea Wallace) to focus on how to teach the subject we all love to varying audiences. 

 

The editors take ample space to set the scene in a detailed and multi-faceted introduction, tracing the journey of IP law from being a “fringe law school subject” many years ago to a subject which percolates through undergraduate and postgraduate curricula well beyond law schools to a rich variety of disciplines. This poses challenges in respect of engaging both law and non-law students, as it requires enthusiasm, skill and imagination on the part of IP law teachers – which is quickly and vividly illustrated across the following seven parts of this book.

Part II provides a closer look at how to strengthen student engagement, mainly to a non-law student audience. I like using props as part of my teaching, and I thought I’d done well to integrate a tea towel and an English afternoon tea tin sporting a red Routemaster London bus to try and engage my students on the finer points of the concept of originality in copyright. I still have some way to go: By using his interest in music and drumming, Nick Scharf (chapter 4) integrated, in a non-gimmicky way, a drum kit into his teaching of originality in the context of sampling. While Scharf had drawn inspiration from “the two most sampled rhythms in history (Funky Drummer and Amen break) I instantly thought of the still on-going Kraftwerk saga. The point of Scharf’s project, however, was that this specific contextualisation achieved a high level of student engagement, bringing a key aspect of IP law to life. He demonstrates that all IP teachers may achieve this by using aspects of their personal interests.

Teaching IP law in a multi-disciplinary way is at the heart of Part III, from integrating empirical research in teaching the subject to adding specific perspectives of sustainability. Helen Gubby commences the discussion on the latter in chapter 9, by linking sustainability to ethics. She invites students to look at IP as a monopoly, discussing its pros and cons, before adding links to competition law and the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Contextualisation revolves around specific case studies for the students to explore. For example, under ‘eliminating hunger’ the class would explore patented seeds, and medical drugs as part of the ‘good healthcare’ task, all of which get the students to think about power imbalance, private and public funding, and questions of where ownership of key commodities should lie. In this way, the teaching is broader than considering the ins and outs of patentability, making the subject topical and accessible to a wider audience.

Part VI emphasises collaboration with students and practitioners in teaching IP law. Chapter 11 by William Page, Jocelyn Bosse and Adrian Aronson-Storrier struck a particular chord with me. The authors advocate peer-assisted learning (PAL) and explain how the enlisting of experienced PAL leaders helped to facilitate voluntary PAL sessions, used by a significant number of students to discuss areas of IP law they find challenging. The authors’ reflections offer helpful best practice guidelines to set up PAL – sessions being optional as beneficial, small group sizes, and transferring responsibility to PAL leaders to plan and shape the extra classes. IP law might not be a high-risk first-year module where PAL can boost pass rates, but in a final year an improved student performance can impact positively on degree classification.

Technology and innovative methods to incorporate into our teaching is addressed in Part V. Chapter 16 by Caroline Coles on artificial intelligence and virtual reality is important vis-à-vis the current debate in academia and the profession, particularly on the former. Senior management of some HEIs may be reluctant to see AI as anything else as a threat to teaching, learning and assessment, while a growing number of teachers in the wider sense have started to embrace the new technology and explore how it usefully can be applied effectively to their teaching methodology and activities. Coles helpfully places this into the IP law teaching context, emphasising employability of future student generations as a key reason for doing so.

The thread of employability-related skills is picked up in more detail in Part VI, where Mandy Haberman promotes “the value of a good story”, especially if the story is told by people who work with IP in the world of business – inventors and entrepreneurs. Haberman, a graphic designer-turned-inventor, provides first-hand insight on how crucial even a fundamental knowledge and understanding of IP is to students in non-law disciplines with career paths into the creative and business sectors in particular, but the teaching of the subject is regularly lacking. Entrepreneurs can help bridge that gap, as their real-life experience of the role IP plays in their business activities serve as purposeful and engaging case studies which assist in exploring the underlying legal issues. “IP education needs to be brought to life so that its impact can be readily understood.” Seconded.

Part VII of the book signposts resources that are publicly available here (a number of podcasts on IP law and beyond), CopyrightUser (making UK copyright law more accessible to non-legal professionals – but even they will find it helpful to explain the law to their clients) and the UK IPO support tools. All of those can enrich how we engage our audiences on their IP journeys. I would add the IP Teaching Kit by the EPO, too.

In the final part, the editors round off the wide-ranging discussions with some reflections. Essentially, time won’t stand still, and there is no end to more challenges and opportunities to make IP teaching engaging – be it ethics stretching beyond patents into other areas of IP law, AI and machine learning, Non-Fungible Tokens, or changes in higher education strategies. IP may have centred on rights of individuals, but its ownership and teaching is likely to become ever more collaborative and collective.

The editors state the need for sharing best practice as a key driver for this book. I regard this as its core strength, as all contributors generously explain and illustrate how they approached and overcame a particular challenge, regularly with examples. There is plenty of reflection, too, which is helpful and encouraging to IP law teachers not to shy away from trying something new. There is plenty of inspiration in this book to help change teaching practice. Based on its thematic approach, law teachers in general will benefit from using this book, as the themes apply across many areas of substantive law teaching.

Details: 

Publisher: Edward Elgar

Available in hardback, paperback and ebook (incl. for library purchase) 

Extent: 362

ISBN: 978 1 80088 099 3