Course 2020-2021 a.y.

After providing a general overview of the relevant competition law and IP categories, the course will cover the legal challenges arising from the management of data, market power, software patentability, inventiveness and artificial intelligence.

In particular, the main topics that will be covered in the course are:

- Information and data

- Antitrust basics

- Antitrust and the data economy

- Data ownership & data management

- Data & power (Google cases)

- The overlaps between antitrust and IP

- IP basics

- Copyright & patents

- Standard-essential patents and FRAND licensing

- Software protection

- AI and inventiveness

- AI and creativity

- Digital exhaustion

- Data protection

• Identify the main legal challenges arising from digital technologies in information law, competition law and IP.
• Illustrate the ways to tackle those legal challenges.

• Apply the legal framework of information law, competition law and IP to concrete cases.

• Compare the legal complexities for newly established companies with that for well-established companies.

• Face-to-face lectures
• Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)
• Group assignments

1. Face-to-face lectures: Theory lectures are guided by the instructors. Students are asked to actively participate (both in-person and online) and to read in advance the material provided. Before starting the theory lecture, the instructors will submit to the class a quiz to check the learning status and to distinguish between attending and non-attending students.

2. Guest speaker's talks: Guests will present their view and a discussion will follow. Invited guests will be strategic figures of Oval Money, Satispay, Soisy, Quick Algorithm, Caffeina or similar business realities.

3. Group assignments: Groups of students (5) will present a case study, following the instructions of the lecturers.

Students who have answered to at least 15 out of 20 quizzes submitted by the instructors are considered attending and are eligible for class presentations.

Therefore, their exam will be:

●      Written exam: one open question + multiple choice questions (70%). The open question aims at assessing the  capacity of identifying the legal issues and addressing them correctly, while the multiple choices aim at verifying that the students have acquired an horizontal knowledge of the subject.  

●      Group presentations in class (30%). The group presentations aim at evaluating students' ability to work in group and address practical (legal) challenges as a team.

Students who have not answered to at least 15 out of 20 quizzes submitted by the instructors are considered non-attending and are not eligible for class presentations.

 Therefore, their exam will be:

• Written exam: two open questions + multiple choice questions (100%) The open question aims at assessing students' capacity of identifying the legal issues and addressing them correctly, while the multiple choices aim at verifying that the students have acquired an horizontal knowledge of the subject. 

Slides used in class, coupled with specific material for each topic covered (case-law, academic papers, news articles), uploaded on the Bboard platform.