Licensing Intellectual Property: Law and Application

Licensing Intellectual Property: Law and Application is a streamlined and highly accessible casebook on the law of licensing and the application of licensing in practice. The authors painstakingly cover all aspects of licensing from the global: Why is licensing the predominant transaction model for ideas and information? Why and how do social policy decisions limit creative legal practice solutions? to the particular: What are the most common licensing provisions? What are the issues in various types of intellectual property licensing?

This exciting new casebook is imminently teachable and can be used in courses of varying length. Look for these distinguishing features:

• user-friendly and accessible to students and instructors of varied backgrounds and levels of expertise
• the authors carefully explain the legal and business context for licensing and provide students with a framework that enables them to understand why and how social policy shape creative legal practice solutions (e.g., limits from fair use, first-sale, and antitrust on contract)
• clearly and concisely enumerates the basic substantive rules of licensing law and underlying policy concerns
• explains why licensing is the predominant transaction model for ideas and information and why publishers, inventors, software developers, and others often use licensing as a transaction model
• goes beyond familiar licensing transactions (e.g., an in-box license and an online “clickwrap” agreement) to explore more sophisticated licenses and what clients (licensor or licensee) are trying to accomplish and why
• covers alternative transaction models (e.g., first sale, public domain, assignment) so that students can help future clients assess the alternatives and choose the best-fitting transaction model
• extensive discussion of timely topics such as free and open source software, technology transfers from universities and research institutions and the government, and licensing in litigation
• introduces students to license drafting through a series of problems and drafting exercises
• the authors’ website will offer additional drafting exercises and sample language

An exceptional, comprehensive Teacher’s Manual will include:

• sample license agreement language for drafting exercises, complete with commentary on how to evaluate student-drafted license language
• guidance on how to use the book in courses of varying lengths (2, 3, or 4 credits)
• detailed answers to all the problems in the book
• additional suggested background materials on the relevant industries and technologies
• additional suggested cases, statutes and law review articles

With its problem- and exercise-based approach Licensing Intellectual Property: Law and Application is the ideal casebook for the instructor who takes a practice-oriented approach to teach licensing law.

An author website to support classroom instruction using this title is available at http://www.aspenlawschool.com/gomulkiewicz