I’ve been looking at the job postings over at Jobs.ac.uk, and there are quite a few postings right now from universities from all over the UK and Ireland. Many of the starting lecturer posts, naturally, want someone to teach a foundation subject as well. So my question is, “What foundation subjects pair well with IT and IP?”

So in the IP world, I think that torts/delict and contract pair well. Many of the “other” IP rights — passing off, personality rights, misappropriation, trade secrets, and so on — are torts. Licensing is obviously a huge part of practising IP law, though perhaps not that big of an area in teaching (in the UK), and so contracts could also pair well.

On the IT side of things, Quirk pointed out some thoughts on curriculum at BILETA (which I blogged about here) for IT law courses. A large part of what he discussed is naturally related to contracts and commercial law, including: distance selling, digital signatures, e-contract issues, and online ADR (ODR). Privacy law / data protection has some crossover with torts/delict, but not as much in this context.

The other great crossover is, of course, with IP and IT — digital copyright, software patents, and the like are all issues that should be a part of both courses. In addition, medical law, which involves torts and privacy as well as patents and the life sciences, also fits in well with all of the above. Any thoughts?

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