GB2114 Intellectual Property Law

Course outline
This course covers the following: Aspects of the law of copyright, unregistered and registered
trademarks, confidential information and patents; analysis of particular issues in the law and policy
of intellectual property, such as internet 'piracy' and access to medicines in developing countries;
economic implications to businesses.
Course outline
1. Overview of intellectual property
2. Copyright
- The Copyright Act 2005, History, Structure of the Copyright Act
3. Copyright- Types of works Protected
- Excluded Works
- Copyright in Literary, Dramatic, Musical and Artistic Works
1. Section 1(1)
2. ‘Work’
3. ‘Author’
4. Conditions for Recognition of copyright
5. General Principles
6. Types of works protected.
- Computer works

4. Copyright- Ownership
1. Ownership by author
2. Works made in the course of employment
3. Joint authorship
4. State’s copyright

5. Assignment & licences

6. Moral Rights
7. Infringements - Infringements of Economic Rights & Moral Rights Infringement
8. Uses not constituting infringement
1. Fair Dealing Use
2. Other Permitted uses

Patents
9. Historical Background to Patents
• What is a Patent
• Why have Patents
• Patent vs. Trade secret
• Cost of Patents
o Transaction costs
o Monopoly costs

1
10. Type of Patents
Utility Patent/Design Patent/Plant Patent

11. Patentability requirements/Element of a Patent

Cover information/Specification/Claims
• What/Who is protected
• Protectable subject matter
• Ownership and Rights conferred
• Novelty and anticipation
• Disclosure and enablement
• Non-Obviousness
12. Infringement and Remedies

Trademarks and unfair competition:

13. Introductory overview of trademark law
• Purposes of Trademark Law
• The Lanham Act
• Distinctiveness
• The Spectrum of Distinctiveness
• Descriptiveness and Secondary Meaning
•
14. Exclusions from Registration (overview)
• Scandalous, Disparaging, and Deceptive
• Geographic
• Name Marks
• Incontestability
• Geographic Limits on Rights
• Limits on Common-Law Rights: Tea Rose
• Limits on Registered Rights
• Trademark rights and protection,
• National and international administration of works and registration,
• General principles of unfair competition law,
• The economic tort of passing off.

15. Industrial design: (overview)

16. Confidential information and trade secrets: overview

• The nature of protectable confidential information and its obligations,
• Employee relationships
• Defense and remedies.

17. Transfer of Technology: (overview)

• The concept of technology transfer,
• licensing agreements including compulsory licensing,
• Ghanaian law and practices of technology transfers.