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Teacher’s Manual for Patent Law and Policy Fourth Edition Robert Patrick Merges John Fitzgerald Duffy Copyright ? 2008 Robert Merges, John Duffy and Lexis Publishing For updates and other teaching materials, see: /9236.htm  Teacher’s Manual for Patent Law and Policy One of the problems in writing a teacher’s manual for a patent casebook mirrors a major problem in teaching the course itself: the diversity of backgrounds people bring to the subject. Some are complete neophytes, drawn by the surge of interest in the field. Others are experienced scientists or engineers, perhaps even patentees themselves, who are familiar at the operational level with many details of the system. And most are somewhere in between, bringing some stock of knowledge and perhaps folklore to their study of the field. We will try to address the concerns of each group in this manual, but a word of advice is in order. Where we felt it necessary to make a choice, we chose to slant the presentation toward the neophyte. The obvious explanation is that this is the group who we felt would need to rely most on the contents of this manual. As for the others, we emphatically do not mean to suggest that there is nothing in this manual for you. Far from it; you will find much of the chapterbychapter explanation useful even if you already are familiar with patent law. The basic aim of this manual is to describe what is covered in each chapter and of course why it’s in there. Thus no matter how well you know patent law in general, you might find this useful in understanding how we put this book together. Two final notes: First, the following website makes available addition teaching materials such as powerpoint slide, updated versions of this teacher’s manual and yearly updates to the casebook: /institutes/bclt/pubs/Patent_Law.html Second, we are always in the process of revising the book, and we appreciate all suggestions, critiques, questions, and comments. Please feel