Last Assignment – What I’ve Learned

Coming in to this class late, I had been hearing from a few of my peers about a class on patents and the patent industry.  As an economics major, it sounded a little foreign to me but I thought I would give it a chance and take the class.  Right away, we started moving into the role of NPE’s and patent trolls and their effect on the patent industry as well as the economy as a whole.  In a prior class I had taken at Cal, we focused on the legal proceedings regarding a plaintiff seeking damages from a defendant.  Many of the examples we discussed surrounded damages paid for patent infringement.  Even though I was learning the legal side of settlements, I did not fully understand the patent system as well as what can be termed “infringement”. 

With the help of this course, I was able to understand all the inner working of a patent infringement lawsuit.  Due to the ambiguous assignments where we were free to do our own research to put into our blogs, I found myself constantly looking up and analyzing more and more cases while becoming more informed and knowledgeable in the process.  Going back to my last blog post, this was a big learning moment for me outside the topic of patents.   Instead of being forced to study a specific topic or article that would be common in other courses, Tal let us be free in what we were to study.  By being able to read the articles I enjoyed and report on them, I found myself doing more and more research than I would have done if I didn’t enjoy the topic.  Further, I found myself more and more intrigued by the subject of patent litigation and now constantly check the latest headlines in infringement cases. 

Besides what Tal taught in class and the work I did on my own, I learned so much from all of my classmates.  Whether it was looking into an issue they had posted in their blogs or hearing their feedback on my posts, the discussions we had truly helped my understanding of the patent industry.  Once again, thank you to Tal as well as everyone else involved in this course.  I really appreciated all your contributions in my learning.

Thanks!!!

Last Assignment – The Use of Social Media in for Class

First off, I have to admit that I was a little skeptical about taking a class that was anything but conventional.  With no midterms or finals, I thought that taking this class with Tal would be completely boring and full of meaningless work.  However, I could not have been more incorrect with my assumptions.

Looking at all of the other classes I’ve taken at Cal, they pretty much followed the same rigorous syllabus and grading format.  Weekly readings and assignments followed by a few midterms, then an end of the year final.  Until taking this class, I thought this was the best way to learn.  Though that may be true for some other subjects such as math and science, the subjects of patents couldn’t be summed up the same.  Looking back at the semester as a whole and all the work we did in class, I can’t believe how much information I’ve retained on the subject.  Patents used to be a completely foreign concept to me, but now I feel that I can speak confidently when discussing the subject.

My favorite part of the class was the fact that we were consistently interacting with our classmates through social media.  Before college, I never even had a Facebook let alone a twitter, YouTube channel, and my own blog so communicating with others online was completely new to me.  I loved the idea of all the comments on the blog posts and video posts.  By hearing each other’s opinions and criticisms, I was able to focus on what I did right as well as the things I could improve on.  Whether it be the structure of my arguments or my understanding of a topic, it was very useful to hear comments from others that may or may not have the same understanding that I did.  Social media, in that way, greatly improved my understanding of learning about the topics discussed in class, as well as learning in general.  Thank you to Tal for forcing me to use these social platforms as well as to all the other students for your feedback on my work.  It has truly been a great semester and I look forward to potentially furthering my knowledge of patents with Tal in the future. 

Thanks!!