Master's Degree in Intellectual Property and Digital Law

Here, there’s no chapel, no “religious war”: patents versus copyright, or copyright versus copyright... What matters is creation—whether traditional or innovative: transgenic animals and “chimeras,” opera or multimedia works, musical trademarks, scent trademarks, plant varieties as commercial “tricks”…—creation grappling with contemporary questions and challenges: the internet, digital creations, the commercialization of research… With faculty members from universities, the CNRS, the bar association, and the private sector, from France and abroad.

The teaching approach is thus always intended to be comprehensive and interdisciplinary in this era of digitization: for example, genetic resources, just like museum artifacts, are meant to be integrated into and circulated within digital databases… Intellectual property law is therefore now necessarily and intimately linked to communications law .

Originally a Research Master’s program, and after three years of offering both tracks (research and professional), the Master 2 program in “Intellectual Property Law and ICT” is now transitioning to a Professional Master’s program. The focus will thus be even more strongly placed on developing partnerships with practitioners in intellectual property law (lawyers, companies, institutions, collective management organizations, research institutions, etc.) and communication law (media companies, software companies, the Internet Rights Forum, etc.)

This change does not undermine our commitment to balancing theoretical analysis with practical application —which, as is always the case in most of our legal disciplines, enrich each other. Furthermore, the combination of these two approaches allows our students—if they so desire and provided they possess the necessary qualifications—to pursue research in the form of a thesis. To give them the opportunity to demonstrate their aptitude for research, each student will be required to write a research paper.

And, to give them the opportunity to enter the workforce, students will have the chance to complete a three-month internship with a program partner or an organization of their choice, provided that the internship focuses on issues of intellectual property and/or communications law.