Wikipedia:Canada Education Program/Courses/Present/Intellectual Property: Copyright, Trademark and Patent (Ariel Katz)/Course description

Information is as basic to the knowledge economy as natural resources were to the industrial economy and human resources to the service economy. The greater the dependence of the economy on new information, the more critical are the institutions that manage its creation, use and exchange. Yet the law creates rights over information (known as intellectual property (IP) rights) much differently than it does over goods or services. The rationale and means for IP rights constitute the subjects of this course. The course will focus on the three principal areas of IP law: copyright, patents and trademarks, it will discuss their theoretical foundations and key concepts and doctrines.

This course had been selected to participate in the Canada Education Program which is part of the Wikimedia Foundation's Global Education Program. The goal of the Global Education Program is to engage students and professors across disciplines, universities, and countries in using Wikipedia as a teaching tool. The Global Education Program's vision is to mobilize and empower the next generation of human knowledge generators to contribute to Wikimedia projects. Based on the learnings from the Public Policy Initiative, a pilot program to use Wikipedia in university classrooms in the 2010-11 academic year, the Global Education Program strives to expand Wikipedia's use as a teaching tool worldwide. Professors who participate in our program assign their students to edit Wikipedia articles as part of their coursework. Students are assisted by trained Wikipedia Ambassadors, who help both in the class and virtually. Five courses at the University of Toronto are already on board for the Canada Education Program. Currently, there are similar programs in the United States, India, and Brazil.