Intellectual Property Rights

6 ECTS credits
150 h study time

Offer 1 with catalog number 4000704EEW for working students in the 2nd semester at a (E) Master - advanced level.

Semester

2nd semester

Enrollment based on exam contract

Possible

Grading method

Grading (scale from 0 to 20)

Can retake in second session

Yes

Enrollment Requirements

NOTE: registration for this course is only possible for working students. Day students can register for courses whose code ends with an R. At Inschrijven / studentenadministratie@vub.be you must be registered at the VUB as a working student for the current academic year.

Taught in

Dutch

Partnership Agreement

Under interuniversity agreement for degree program

Faculty

Faculty of Law and Criminology

Department

Economic Law

Educational team

Fabienne Brison (course titular)

Activities and contact hours

39 contact hours Lecture
110 contact hours Independent or External Form of Study

Course Content

The course 'Intellectual Property Rights’ is a (practical) introduction to the intellectual property and, after a general introduction to intellectual property (ratio legis, basic principles and concepts), is divided into two parts.

The first (detailed) part covers all the basic principles of copyright and related rights: (1) the object of protection and the conditions for protection, (2) the scope of protection (the moral and economic rights, inclusing the exceptions and remuneration rights, and the term of protection) and (3) the beneficiaries of protection (including the rules for author contracts and the functioning of / control on collective management societies). Attention is given to the neighbouring rights, the lex specialis for computer software and the sui generis protection for databases. This part is concluded with an overwiew of remedies and procedures in IP, and an overview of the international and European framework.

The other traditional intellectual rights, industrial property rights, are discussed in the second (more concise) part: patents, design rights and trade marks. After a theoretical introduction about their respective scope of application / conditions of protection, scope of protection and persons entitled to protection, guest lectures are given about the these rights in practice and some cases are explained.

The course deals with these aspects mostly under Belgian law, but gives attention to the applicable international and European legal framework.

Course material

Digital course material (Required) : Slides van de hoorcolleges ter beschikking gesteld, Canvas

Additional info

Students are firmly recommended to be present during the lectures. There will also be some guest lectures, eventually elsewhere (in Brussels), sometimes in a language other than Dutch (French or English).

All slides of the lectures (including the guest lectures who are part of the course) will be made available on the learning platform of the VUB. These slides should be supplemented by own notes taken during the (guest) lectures.

Students are presumed to dispose of the legal texts being analysed, who will be made available in a (still to be published) Codex (non-binding) or, by default, to be downloaded by the students from the internet.

Working students are invited to attend the lectures that are usually organized in the early evening.

Learning Outcomes

General competencies

Students gain profound knowledge in one of the specialist fields of economic law.
Students gain insight in both Belgian and European and international law and learn and understand the interaction between the various legal instruments.
Students are initiated into the foundations, objectives, evolution and bottlenecks of certain legal rules, allowing them to develop a critical view on the state of law and the developments of intellectual property rights.

Grading

The final grade is composed based on the following categories:
Oral Exam determines 100% of the final mark.

Within the Oral Exam category, the following assignments need to be completed:

Oral Exam with a relative weight of 1 which comprises 100% of the final mark.

Additional info regarding evaluation

Oral exam with written part: one question (the same for all students) will be answered in writing, without further oral explanation; some (2 or more) additional questions will be asked during the oral defense.

During the exam, use can be made of the (non-annotated) legal texts (for the oral questions only within reasonable limits because some ready knowledge is still required); consultation of other study material is not permitted.

Some examples of questions:
1. Do you need the consent of the designer of a logo if it was designed for your business needs, but your company after having it used a few years, wants to modernize it?
2. How is the copyright protection of audiovisual works in Belgium regulated?
3. What are the protection criteria to obtain a Belgian patent?
4. Explain provision x from Act x
5. Analyse a newspaper article in the light of the course

Allowed unsatisfactory mark

The supplementary Teaching and Examination Regulations of your faculty stipulate whether an allowed unsatisfactory mark for this programme unit is permitted.

Academic context