Intellectual property rights (IPR) has a great impact on innovation development and society. In Science, Engineering, and Business, we seek to create wealth through innovation in products, designs, manufacturing processes, and business systems or models. However, innovation leaders often FAIL to benefit from their discoveries and inventions when they are unable to adequately protect those innovations. This course provides learners with an understanding of how trademark laws can be used to protect business innovation using a combination of lectures and case examples for discussion.
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The course focus on protecting innovations with Trademark as one of several tools that can be used by companies to protect their brands and products. In additional to learning about how trademark law works in theory, we will also discuss situations in which trademark might not be effective in protecting innovations, and will focus on the legal issues involved from a practical business perspective rather than from a purely legal viewpoint. This course is one part of a four course series focusing on protection of business innovations using copyright, patent, trademark and strategy, and these four courses may be taken in any order that is most beneficial to students interested in learning about protecting innovation.
Syllabus
WEEK 1
Introduction to Trademark
Welcome to this course on Protecting Business Innovations via Trademark! How do companies protect their intellectual property, creative innovations and protect their brands from being copied? Over the next three weeks you will gain insight on how companies protect their brands & trademark through trademark law, registration, lawsuit and acquisition. As you go through the materials, you may have your own trademark related questions or scenarios that pop-up, feel free to post them in the discussion forum. Take some time to review the assignments, grading and general course guidelines for this course. Week 1 will cover the basics of trademark law and why local brands sometimes can beat international well–known brands with the same trademarks.
WEEK 2
Trademark Global Issues and Challenges
In this week we will look at lawsuits of iPhone and iPad trademark violations in China. Remember trademark law is local, but businesses now are facing a big challenge in e-commerce because local brands can no longer be local if they have online shops. Trademark violation becomes an international issue and creates challenges one must strategically overcome.
WEEK 3
Trademark Infringement and defenses
In this week we mainly focus on trademark infringement and lawsuits which can last for more than 25 years, how judges will use trademark violations tests to evaluate infringement, and how big companies use strategy in brand acquisition to eliminate competition.
WEEK 4
Peer-graded Assignment
This is the final week of the course, let's put it all together through this peer review assignment to showcase how much you have learned!
