Class 03: IP Basics ; Why Write?

Held: Thursday, 25 August 2005

Summary: Today, we consider some basic issues of intellectual property. As importantly, we begin our consideration of writing (why to write; how to edit).

Due

• Miscellaneous Assignment 3: About College Work (due last night).
• Writing Assignment 1: Copyright and Web Links.
• McLeod: Preface and Chapter 1.
• Green and Rebelsky 1-3.
• Williams and McEnerney.
• Williams, Chapter 1.
• Rebelsky (Everything).

Handouts:

• Draft of Important lessons from (Not Quite) Everything You Need to Know to Survive SamR's Tutorial.
• Draft of Important lessons from Writing in College.
• A Writing Rubric.
• New version of Writing assignment 2.

Notes:

• Two of you failed to turn in Miscellaneous Assignment 3 on time. Instead, you must now arrange your colleagues' comments into logical groups. (Cut and paste the handouts into word and then reorder the bullet points.) This replacement assignment is due at 7 p.m. on Sunday.
• As you should have seen on the syllabus, I require a weekly appointment for all of my Tutees. We'll spend a few minutes at the beginning of class setting up times for those appointments.
• There's a concert downtown tonight at Central Park (5:30ish): Lil' Ed and the Blues Imperials.
• I recommend the downtown event which runs from 4-7 p.m. on Friday, too. (I'll be counting ballots, so I may not be able to make it.) The a capella groups are singing at 4:30 and 5:00 p.m.
• Warning! You have a lot of reading for Tuesday (and Thursday). You should start it soon.

Overview:

• Discussion: Purple book
• Discussion: Why write?
• Lecture/Discussion: IP Basics
• Exercise: Peer Editing

Administrivia

• [15 minutes]
• Signup for regular appointments.
• A few other things.

The Purple book

• [15 minutes]
• What was the most surprising thing you found in the syllabus or in Writing in College?
• What else do you need to know about this Tutorial?

Why write?

• [15 minutes]
• At the first session, a few of you indicated that writing is at the core of Tutorial.
• Why?
• That is, why bother writing?

IP Basics

• [15 minutes]
• Traditional property, also known as real property: Things that have a tangible existence (often real estate, but lots of other things too).
• Intellectual preprty: Stuff that may lack tangible existence, but is the product of the intellect.
• Revolutionary idea: Just as we protect real property, so can we protect intellectual property.
• Three key kinds of IP:
  • Patent: Protect inventions
  • Copyright: Protect expression of ideas
  • Trademarks: Protect the marks of trade
• Other kinds of IP law:
  • Trade secret
  • Other?
• Why have IP law?

Peer Editing

• [30 minutes]
• Get into groups of three or four. Make sure that you have both opinions represented in your group.
• Each of you should edit two of your colleague's papers (spending about ten minutes on each one)
  • Read it through quickly
  • Fill out the evaluation rubric
• Spend the last ten minutes or so discussing what you've found

McLeod 1

• If there's time, we'll do a little bit of analysis of Chapter 1 of McLeod.