The class will meet Mondays & Wednesdays from 6:00pm – 7:25pm in Room 170.

My office is Room 743. My telephone number is 312-906-5326 and my e-mail address is rstaudt@kentlaw.edu. My computer is always on while I am in the law school and I encourage you to send messages to me by electronic mail.

The text for this course is Gorman and Ginzburg, COPYRIGHT, Cases and Materials, published by Foundation Press. We will use the sixth edition published in 2002 with its 2005 Statutory Appendix.

The book is almost current. The supplement is very current. The authors delayed shipping the supplement so that it could include the recent U.S Supreme Court opinion in the Grokster case. The law of copyright is changing rapidly. Occasionally, I will assign additional cases and materials. You are encouraged to suggest new cases or other materials. The book contains a useful bibliography of secondary materials to supplement the text.

Assignments are posted in the Assignments section of the website. The assignments are tentative and will be adjusted as we proceed through the material. Review the website regularly.

I plan to take advantage of the technological support that the law school has available to help us investigate Copyright Law. Everyone should have 24 hour access to LEXIS and to the Internet so that we can read the newest material available. If you need more training in the use of the computer databases, let me know. In addition, I consider e-mail to be an extension of class. I have established a web site for our class with this document and other pertinent information. The class web site URL is http://www.kentlaw.edu/classes/rstaudt/copyright_fall2005

The bulk of the grade in this course will be based on your performance on the final examination. I have not yet decided on the form of the final, but I expect that it will be rather traditional. I may change my mind before December. I will probably allow you to bring your casebook, other materials and any of your own notes. I will not allow copies of scarce resources like the major treatises.

To encourage your active involvement during the semester, one-half of a grade differential may be based on class preparation and participation. In other words, I will grade the exams and assign a grade. If you are a conscientious, insightful and effective member of the class, your grade may be raised from your exam grade to one-half letter grade higher. If you are frequently unprepared and fail to participate, I will consider that performance in lowering marginal examination grades by one-half of a grade. If you are somewhere in between, I may exercise my discretion to raise your grade by one-half grade depending on the level of your class performance and the proximity of your exam grade to the nearest margin.

I consider electronic mail to be an opportunity to extend the class beyond its usual form and time limits. E-mail to me (which I will forward to all class members, unless you specifically ask me to keep a message private) are counted as part of your class participation in the course.

All students must attend at least 75% of the classes in this course. There are 28 classes. You must be present for at least 21 of these classes.

Any student who does not attend the minimum number of classes has not met a requirement for getting credit for the course and may not take the Final Examination. Keep your own count. Sometime after the last class, but before the hour of the Examination, a list of students who meet the minimum attendance requirement and are qualified to take the Final Exam will be posted outside Room 743. This is not an "excuse" system; a student's reason for non attendance is not of interest.

A class roster will be passed around each class; your own signature after your printed name will be the only evidence of your presence that day, for the entire class. If you leave shortly after the class begins, your signature should not remain on the class roster indicating you attended that class.

Distance Learning Project

Instead of a traditional class on the Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving, we will substitute two CALI lessons, one on Sound Recordings and another on the Rights of Performance and Display. There will be some reading in our casebook to accompany these lessons.