I’m off tonight to teach my IP class. A few hours tonight and a few hours tomorrow morning.

This is the second year I’ve taught an overview of China IP law to LLM students, and this weekend I sat down with last year’s Powerpoint to review my updates.

A few things that came to mind:

1. The sluggish economy does change things. I have a few slides on innovation policy, and it seems to me that the balancing act between local protectionism/infant industry protection and attracting foreign investment is even more difficult now than it was a year ago.

2. Law reform. Despite ongoing reform of the patent law, trademark law, introduction of the AML, etc., there is little "big picture" stuff to discuss, at least from a survey class perspective. Really quite different from the last time we did this (1999/2000/2001).

3. IP enforcement problems. No big changes, very few edits required. As was expected.

4. Internet and digital piracy. More and more issues related to digital piracy and use of the Internet to facilitate all kinds of IP infringement and counterfeiting. Used to be that IP lawyers that dealt with typical anti-counterfeiting scenarios (e.g. luxury goods or consumer items) left Internet-related issues to specialists. That hasn’t really been true for a few years, and these days, an IP lawyer that ignores the Net is committing malpractice.

5. HR issues. I only have a limited amount of class time, so I cannot talk about everything. The one area that deserves more time but will go without significant mention is the overlap between HR/labor law and IP. This comes up with great frequency in my practice, so I really should try to find a way to address this in my IP survey materials. Too important to minimize.

6. Discussion topics. This year, I will definitely lead a discussion on the Microsoft Black Screen of Death. I am curious to what the students think about this and whether there is a difference of opinion between the foreign and Chinese students. If I have enough time tomorrow morning, we will also discuss MP3/deep linking case law, although I have a feeling there will not be sufficient time for a second discussion. We’ll see.

If anything of interest crops up during class, I will blog about it tomorrow.