The casebook you’re reading may strike you as very different from other texts you’ve used in law school. Rather than a beautiful gray-and-silver or red-and-gold bound book with small text, heavily edited case excerpts, and notes that most students skip, it’s an electronic file or a paperback book, with long case excerpts (and in many instances, the entirety of the court’s opinion) and a handful of notes that come before the cases, not after. The limited number of cases might strike you as especially odd for a course that is intended to survey the entirety of four-plus fields of law.

All of these choices were made intentionally. Rather than opt for a traditional published casebook, I instead assembled these materials into a collection that you can read on any device and made the file available to you free of charge. Instead of many short case excerpts that provide you with key rules or doctrines, I’ve instead chosen a handful of judicial opinions for us to discuss—about one or two per chapter—and provided descriptive notes to fill in the details. Intellectual property cases often involve an array of legal, factual and policy considerations, and focusing on one or two opinions per class will allow for more in-class time discussing individual cases and the issues they present. Having the entire opinion will also give you more context and nuance for each of the decisions. And it will help you begin to focus on the most important parts of a long opinion, something you will need to do in practice.

Because reading full opinions is not easy, especially at the beginning of your legal career, another important component of this casebook are sets of questions to focus on while reading the cases. Lawyers generally approach texts this way, reading with purpose rather than to glean abstract knowledge. As you read the opinions, do it with a mind toward answering the questions posed.

A few notes on using this casebook. First, make sure to read the prefatory text at the start of each section. In addition to the questions, this text contains additional information about doctrines and other important cases. In addition, make sure to read the statutory sections that are cited in the text and cases. This text can often be just as important as the cases themselves. In this new edition of the textbook, the key statutes now accompany the cases so that you can easily find them.

Thanks to my research assistants who have helped with this and previous editions of this text, as well as the students who have provided feedback on how it can be improved. Enjoy!

Jason Rantanen