Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Forbes - USC Sees The Future With New Course Offering - Intellectual Property

In USC Sees The Future With New Course Offering, Marshall Phelps reports that University of Southern California is offering an intellectual property course for undergraduates through the Marshall Business School.

Here's an excerpt from the article: "... intellectual property is the new watchword for almost any career of the future. The only problem is, most of our higher education institutions haven't gotten the memo yet, and that’s a real bummer for young people.

Here’s why: Intellectual property (IP) now accounts for a whopping 38.2% of total U.S. GDP and 30% of total national employment. Yet despite IP's enormous role in the U.S. economy, almost no American universities offer any undergraduate courses on the basic workings of patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets in U.S. social and economic life."

This “IP education gap” poses a real threat to U.S. leadership of the 21st century knowledge economy. To understand why, just imagine how U.S. leadership of the industrial economy of one hundred years ago would have been hamstrung had there been no Wharton School or Forbes or Harvard Business Review to teach industrial management and the organization of mass production enterprises to 20th century business leaders. Similar stakes exist today.

That’s why it’s such good news that the University of Southern California (USC) has stepped forward with a first-of-its-kind course for general undergraduates on the basics of IP. This new program, launched by the Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies within USC’s Marshall School of Business, will train tomorrow’s leaders in the skills they need to navigate our IP-driven economy. If successful, it will be rolled out to some 40 other colleges and universities nationwide.

Pioneered by USC President C. L. Max Nikias and billionaire medical inventor Dr. Gary Michelson, USC's new undergrad course — named “The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Intellectual Property” — launched this fall semester. Taught by Kirkland & Ellis partner Luke Dauchot, this innovative new course has already attracted a who’s who of IP luminaries as guest speakers.

These include former Patent Office director David Kappos, long-time Google head of patents and current Facebook IP chief Allen Lo, Dolby’s General Counsel Andy Sherman, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi’s chief of IP strategy Paul Lin, and a dozen of the senior-most IP leaders of Apple, Nike, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Dollar Shave, and other high-flying IP-intensive companies."

Good job President Nikias and Dr. Michelson!

Note the author Marshall Phelps led the very profitable IBM and Microsoft patent licensing programs.

Copyright © 2017 Robert Moll. All rights reserved.