Specialization: Law & Technology
Welcome to the beating heart of Start Up Nation! Do you have a memory stick? It was invented a few buildings away from our law school, at the Faculty of Engineering at TAU. Do you use online banking? Your bank probably uses a firewall made in Israel. Does your car have MobilEye installed? It was developed nearby, in Jerusalem. There is a reason why Google, Facebook, Intel, HP and other global hi-tech companies established research centres in Israel. We are in the midst of an information revolution, a mobile revolution, and likely other major changes that we will be able to appreciate only in years to come. The Law & Technology track of the International LL.M Program focuses on the development of technology within social, economic, political—and legal—contexts. The track offers courses on Intellectual Property (IP), information law, and other related issues.
Introductory courses are offered so that you can delve into the issues even if you have little or no previous background. The advanced seminars, workshops, and introductory courses are taught by first-rate professors, enabling you to immerse yourselves into the topic, and experience different modes of teaching.
To complete your specialization in Law & Technology track, you must take at least 11 credits of the LL.M.’s 32 required credits, from courses within the Law & Technology track, but you are more than welcome to take as many courses as you see fit – and that fit your schedule. You can focus on IP or on Information Law, or mix both, as you wish. You can also take courses from the other tracks, in addition to general elective courses.
The professors and courses refer to the 2017-2018 academic year - please be aware that courses and professors change each year.
If you wish to delve into the world of patents, copyright, trade secrets and other IP fields, you will be able to take, in the Fall semester, Introduction to IP, co-taught by two leading Israeli specialists, Adv. Tony Greenman, who will make sure you know the fundamentals of copyright law, and Adv. Eran Bareket, who will bring you all to the same page in patent law. You can then proceed with International IP in the Spring Semester taught by Dr. Amir Khoury from TAU Law. A practical business course on Licensing of IP is taught by Adv. David Mirchin, also in the Spring Semester. For those with interest in the arts, you can take Visual Arts & the Law, with Prof. Kurt Siehr. With Prof. Orly Lobel of University of San Diego School of Law you will focus on the optimal policy ingredients, legal and business strategies for managing innovation, in IP/Innovation Nexus. Prof. Michael Madison, from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, will teach about Intellectual Property Law in Institutional Context.
The second leg of the track is information law. The introductory course is taught in the format of a seminar, during the Fall Semester, by the program’s academic director, Prof. Michael Birnhack. The seminar is composed of classes, student lectures, and ultimately, your own original research work. You will be able to discuss cutting edge issues about Freedom of Speech in the Digital Age with Prof. Oren Bracha of the University of Texas. Other courses will focus on the increasingly important issue of informational privacy. Prof. Matthew Kugler of Northwestern University will teach American Information Privacy Law in the Fall. Prof. Michael Birnhack and Prof. Lisa Austin of the University of Toronto will co-teach an innovative course on Contemporary Privacy Problems, with students in Tel Aviv and In Toronto. A first local phase in the Fall semester, to make sure that we are all on the same page; students at TAU will then team-up with students from Canada, to work together on privacy-related case studies. We will then have, in the Spring semester, several joint classes, via video conferencing.
The Law & Information Technology Workshop is a unique TAU Law format of studying, taught by Prof. Michael Birnhack and Prof. Assaf Jacob. Like in other workshops, we enable scholars and students to engage directly on academic works in progress: our diverse guests present the articles they are working on to graduate law students, eager for your feedback.
This is how it looks, for the techi lawyer:
