Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Public Policy/Courses/Intellectual Property Law fall 2010

Course description
This course will provide an overview of the intellectual property laws with which information managers need to be familiar. It will start with a consideration of trade secrecy law that information technology and other firms routinely use to protect commercially valuable information. It will then consider the role that copyright law plays in the legal protection of information products and services. Although patents for many years rarely were available to protect information innovations, patents on such innovations are becoming increasingly common. As a consequence, it is necessary to consider standards of patentability and the scope of protection that patent affords to innovators. Trademark law allows firms to protect words or symbols used to identify their goods or services and to distinguish them from the goods and services of other producers. It offers significant protection to producers of information products and services. Because so many firms license intellectual property rights, some coverage of licensing issues is also important. Much of the course will concern the legal protection of computer software and databases, but it will also explore some intellectual property issues arising in cyberspace.

Assignment overview
Students will complete two "Wikipedia Projects" the first of which will be to create a new article or substantially revise an existing article on a topic related to those discussed in this course. As a second project, students will sign up to review and revise the project of a fellow student. Potential topics and sign ups are at the IP Law WikiProject page.

Assignment timeline
This is a summary of the key due dates and the expected timeline for the assignments.
 * 2 September (week 1) - Create an account and create a user page.
 * 7 September (week 2) - Review Wikipedia Content guidelines and the instructional video on verifiability and neutral point of view.
 * 9 September (week 2) - Review some existing articles (see Brian's Userspace for a list of prior articles his students have created or substantially revised).
 * 16 September (week 3) - Select the article you will work on as your main project.
 * 21 September (week 4) - Begin compiling a bibliography and studying the sources. (Consider using your Wikipedia userspace to compile this list.)
 * 28 September (week 5) - Bibliography draft due.
 * 5 October (week 6) - Outline draft due. Begin writing 3-4 paragraph summary version of article (with citations).
 * 12 October (week 7) - Continue revising and improving the article.
 * 19 October (week 8) - Initial version of complete article due. Move your summary article into main space, compose one-sentence "hook", and nominate it for Did you know. Request peer review.
 * 26 October (week 9) - Sign up and begin reviewing and editing a classmate's article.
 * 2 November (week 10) - Complete revisions to classmate's article. Recommended deadline to nominate articles for Good Article status.

Students
The list of students and their articles, which students will sign up for at the appropriate time is maintained on the IP Law WikiProject page.