Patents, Copyrights, and the Law of Intellectual Property
This MIT OpenCourseWare course gives an intensive introduction to U.S. intellectual property law, with the heaviest emphasis on patents: what qualifies as patentable subject matter, how the application and examination process works, and what remedies are available when a patent is infringed. The course also covers copyright law and touches on trade secrets and trademarks, situating these doctrines within the broader legal and policy debates over innovation incentives. Materials include a syllabus, lecture notes, readings drawn from case law and statutes, and assignments that ask students to analyze real disputes over invention rights and creative works. It is taught jointly through MIT's Sloan School of Management and its Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department, aimed at students with technical backgrounds who need to understand how the legal system treats inventions and creative output. All course materials are freely available online under MIT's open license.