7.1 General Research Areas

1. Conceptualising the digital environment: evaluate the kinds of analogies the courts apply to progress the development of intellectual property laws in cyberspace.

2. Evaluate the various approaches to regulating cyberspace.

3. Discuss either the protection of the public domain or privacy with respect to the sociology of software.

4. Debate the need to regulate Internet content.

5. Cyber-jurisdiction: discuss choice of law, jurisdiction and the Internet, with reference to both case law and future policy as evidenced by the Draft Hague Convention.

6. The resolution of disputes concerning Internet domain names.

7. Patents in cyberspace: Electronic Commerce and Business Method Patents.

8. The protection of informational products through unjust enrichment law.

9. Jurisdiction and choice of law concerning defamation in cyberspace.

10. Assess the work of UNCITRAL in developing global laws for electronic contracts and digital signatures.

11. The impact of copyright law on the science of cryptography.

12. Privacy and the Internet.

13. The regulation of spam.

14. Discuss the extent of liability of Internet service providers for copyright infringement.

15. Free speech, the Internet and intellectual property.

16. Electronic commerce and intellectual property.

17. Self-help and electronic rights management systems.

18. Microsoft and principles of competition law for informational products.

7.2 Specific paper topics

1. In July 2001 newspapers reported that a Russian computing student, Dmitry Sklyarov had been arrested under US copyright laws while attending a "hackers'" convention in Las Vegas for allegedly creating a program to circumvent the copyright protection on one of the Adobe company's products. Offer a critical evaluation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In your view does it provide a constructive balance between copyright and user access to public domain information

2. Critically evaluate the current provisions for the reverse engineering of computer software.

3. Do you consider the Motion Picture Industry should be able to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to defend the regional encryption of movies on DVD (digital versatile disk)? Give a reasoned view after setting out the arguments for both industry and consumer.

4. Discuss the interrelationship between copyright and contract in the shrinkwrap and click-on licensing of computer software.

5. Debate the merits of the expanded trade secret protection provided by the Economic Espionage Act 1996 in relation to the software industries.

6. We now have a sizeable literature on the sociology of software. To what extent should international intellectual property law for the protection of software and databases take account of its implications for the information society?

7. Neither TRIPS nor the WIPO Copyright Treaties contain specific provisions governing the scope of public domain rights in the access and use of information. Is such a development desirable? Discuss your view of the matter with reference to the United States and at least one other major jurisdiction.