When you turn on a light, when you pick up a snack in the shop, when you take medicine, you are likely engaging with products that have intellectual property protection through a patent and/or a trade mark. These rights allow the owner to prevent others from copying or using the protected works.

Developments in these areas have brought enormous benefits to society, many of which have been protected by intellectual property rights. Patent law provides exclusive, time-limited protection for inventions that are new, inventive and applicable in industry. The device you are reading this from has likely required thousands of inventions to get to this point. Trade marks protect the signs attached to such goods and make sure that the information consumers see on products are accurate and truthful. For example, most products that you find on the shelves of your local supermarket have logos protected by trade marks.

In this module, you will examine the rationale, rules and regulations relating to patent and trade mark law. We will explore the legal, social and ethical implications of the protection of such creations. We will consider long standing and contemporary debates around access to medicines, biotechnological inventions, re-packaging of pharmaceuticals, counterfeit goods, the impact of developments in technology, and more.

A core question in intellectual property law is how we balance exclusive rights with access – this question will form the basis of our investigations. In class, you will also have the opportunity to engage in presentations, debates and discussions with your peers.