Posts Tagged: "Center for Intellectual Property Understanding"

Students at prestigious universities in the United States are not required to take even a single intellectual property (IP) course to fulfill the requirements for a graduate business degree. Course offerings in 2021 remain elective at all of the elite management programs, and the coverage varies by school, department offering them and the background of the instructor. These and other findings about IP education at business schools are contained in a report compiled by the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding (CIPU) that will be announced on Thursday at the 4th Intellectual Property Awareness Summit. The report, “Intellectual Property at Business Schools: An Evolving Landscape,” looks at the state of IP education at the top 20 U.S. programs, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report, and comes away with decidedly mixed findings. While some 44 courses are offered by the leading programs, almost one-third offer a single elective course, and none are compulsory. This is particularly pertinent on World IP Day, the theme of which this year focuses on the importance of IP rights for small and medium businesses, and the problems that a lack of IP understanding can lead to.

“The world is unaware of the cannibalistic nature of the current IP system and what it means for innovation and jobs,” Dan Brown, an award-winning inventor (40+ patents) and Professor of Design at Northwestern University, told a livestream presentation last week, titled ‘Living with the Impact of Covid-19.’ He added: “We have failed to support the rights of the inventor. Providers of look-alike products, both domestic and foreign, are engaged in theft but not held accountable. It is more efficient to infringe or steal someone’s work than to spend the time and money to develop it yourself. The chances of being caught and punished are much more unlikely today than a decade ago.”

Intellectual property (IP) promotes innovation. The limited right to exclude others from copying patented inventions, copyrighted original works of authorship, and trademarked brands and logos encourages innovators to invest their time and money. IP appeals to our sense of fairness by discouraging or preventing counterfeiting, passing off, and other harmful takings of the fruits of investments in research, development, creativity and innovation, and is leveraged by entrepreneurs seeking start-up capital. Unfortunately, the general public lacks a true understanding of how IP fuels our innovation economy. Today, IP practitioners are bombarded with so many free newsletters about IP that we simply cannot read them all—it is no longer a function of getting access to information, but which sources of information are the best use of one’s time. The same is true for the general public, which is increasingly exposed to references about IP in social and news media, advertising, and other public channels. Unfortunately, those references to IP are not always accurate and often require explanation.