Coming to a school near you ...?

Crestfallen, the class learns that their brilliant scheme for knitting their own  adidas tracksuits may have serious legal repercussions ...

A very good friend of the IPKat is not only an excellent intellectual property lawyer but, through some strange quirk of fate, a fully qualified secondary school teacher. In a discussion with this Kat, his friend observed that it would be a good thing if IP lawyers spent some time in schools, talking to children about IP. There were two immediate advantages in doing this: it would give youngsters some idea of what they could do without running into legal trouble and, more importantly, it would also alert the more creative of them -- particularly musicians, artists and writers -- as to the precautions they might take to guard against being ripped off by others.

This all struck the Kat as a good idea, not least since he was involved some years ago in trying to untangle a number of school-related IP problems. In one case he helped sort out the mess after some sixth-formers [note to readers from outside the jurisdiction -- 'sixth-formers' are children in the two final years before the leave school for tertiary education, a gap year or what is sometimes termed "the real world"] decided that their school drama production for the year would be a popular musical which was concurrently running in a West End theatre: they thought there was no problem with copyright since they'd printed the music and lyrics off the internet instead of photocopying them on the school's reprographic apparatus, and that it was okay to perform the show because they weren't doing it professionally. In another instance a school production wanted to use a chunk of text from the English translation of a work by a popular 20th century Italian novelist: they assumed that this was okay because the author was dead.

The point of all this is that the Kat's friend has boldly agreed to lead a little initiative which, until a better name comes along, is provisionally entitled 'EduKat'.  We are looking for IP lawyers and enthusiasts -- any sort will do -- who fit one or more of the categories:

• willing to give up a little of their time to visit secondary schools and speak to students in a balanced way about both what IP can do for them and what it stops them doing;
  
• qualified to teach at secondary school level;
  
• having previous experience of speaking about IP in schools;
  
• neither experienced or qualified but prepared to give it a try, with the aid of some guidance and/or training in how to approach it.

If you'd like to be involved, please email your interest to IP in Schools at ipinschools@gmail.com, with the subject line 'EduKat' and, if possible, give a brief outline of any experience or qualifications that might be relevant.