[Emerging challenges in intellectual property]: Kathy Bowrey, Michael Handler and Dianne Nicol (Eds.)

The teaching of intellectual property in Australian law schools (and indeed the teaching of intellectual property into other disciplines such as media, journalism and science) is, like the universe, continuously evolving and expanding. As an undergraduate law student I had the luxury of being taught intellectual property as an elective subject for an entire year. We covered what we thought was ‘everything’ then: copyright, patents, trade marks, designs, and confidential information; but of course, we did not know the important topics that had to be left out due to time constraints. Now intellectual property teachers commonly face the difficulty of the ‘survey course’, all of the above (and more) in one semester. This means that teachers have to attempt to throw everything into one subject or, if they are lucky, their law school may offer two intellectual property electives, and it can be divided into ‘copyright’ and ‘patents’. The dilemma then is what topics to cover and which book to prescribe. Indeed, what book is fair to prescribe for the student doing the survey course or only a one semester elective?