It's at a rock concert. It's on soft-drink labels and all over newspapers.
It's intellectual property - the issues surrounding copyrights, trademarks, patents and Internet law - and MSU-DCL College of Law Professor Peter Yu said it's increased in importance as society's focus shifts to biotechnology, cloning and online file sharing.
"You drink a Coca-Cola and the brand name is right there," Yu said. "It was always important, but people are now realizing it."
This year MSU-DCL launched a 14-credit concentration on intellectual property for graduating law students. The growth in society's interests, MSU-DCL Dean Terrence Blackburn said, is reflected in the students and employers demanding more background about the ownership of ideas.
"In the last few years, intellectual property has been very high amongst the programs students were interested in," Blackburn said, adding that the college conducted an informal survey to DCL students.
Yu, the program director, had experience with creating an intellectual property program when he worked at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in New York City. Yu said the program he came from has repeatedly been named one of the best by U.S. News and World Report.
MSU-DCL professors Adam Mossoff and Kevin Saunders, along with Yu, will teach several classes concerning intellectual property.
Mossoff, who specializes in patent law, said the demand for knowledge about intellectual property is so high that students will need the education to keep up with the number of intellectual property cases after they graduate. The concentration will help law students understand the reasoning, history and future of the issues.
"The program will focus both on the policies and values that underlie intellectual property and communication law as well as how to understand from whence the law came and where it is going," Mossoff said.
Yu said the future of intellectual property will be discussed at MSU-DCL with other universities. A link between MSU-DCL and the University of Ottawa will allow students from both programs to work on research projects, have open discussions and exchange guest speakers, Yu said.
Development of the new program will also create new internship opportunities for law students. Yu said students will have the opportunity to intern for nonprofit, profit and government organizations to do work in the intellectual property field.
"They will get real client contact," Yu said. "Instead of a professor just telling them what will happen, rather, they will see what will happen."
