This course is a cross platform "consumer" survey course to search, mine and manipulate patent and non-patent literature data for legal and business applications. It is taught in collaboration with patent data vendors and related guest speakers. This is a hands-on course. The work product is a novelty/prior art report. Themes of this course include: multiplicity of sources, types of sources, multiple access points to same data, who uses patent data sources, why use patent data sources, factors to choose access points, search approaches, who drives the dollar chain for searches, free, low fee and premium patent sources, in house and/or outsource searches, considerations as to who performs differing types of searches, what is the standard of care for patent searches and how to deal with questions of lack of integrity in patent documents.

Students wishing to engage in academic work (such as authoring or co-authoring a paper under the supervision of a faculty member, working in a supervised law firm or in-house position, or some other project, the final work product to be received by the Registrar) may be eligible and able to work with a faculty member to oversee and guide the work, as well as to provide structure, milestones, and assessment of the work. Credits, grading, and prerequisites will depend on the nature of the work and determined in conjunction with the faculty member.

Students wishing to engage in academic work (such as authoring or co-authoring a paper under the supervision of a faculty member, working in a supervised law firm or in-house position, or some other project, the final work product to be received by the Registrar) may be eligible and able to work with a faculty member to oversee and guide the work, as well as to provide structure, milestones, and assessment of the work. Credits, grading, and prerequisites will depend on the nature of the work and determined in conjunction with the faculty member.

Students wishing to engage in academic work (such as authoring or co-authoring a paper under the supervision of a faculty member, working in a supervised law firm or in-house position, or some other project, the final work product to be received by the Registrar) may be eligible and able to work with a faculty member to oversee and guide the work, as well as to provide structure, milestones, and assessment of the work. Credits, grading, and prerequisites will depend on the nature of the work and determined in conjunction with the faculty member.