The Santa Clara Munich Program focuses on basic, comparative, and international aspects of intellectual property law. Munich is the home of the European Patent Office, whose counterpart is the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Therefore, Munich is the ideal place to study patents and their impact on the rest of the European Community. The Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Patent, Copyright and Competition Law is also located in Munich, and plays an important part in the program because many of the lecturers are drawn from there. Instruction also includes, but is not limited to, competition law, copyright, design, trade secrets, trademarks and database protection.
Instruction is approximately four weeks long, upon which there is a graded final exam.
Students will receive four semester units for the course. Professor Chisum gives several lectures and participates in most class sessions. The other faculty members are mentioned beginning on page three. The program also includes an optional internship component, where students may work at a law firm doing international patent and trademark work or intellectual property litigation. Students will receive two semester units upon 100 hours of interning.