This course was a very welcome surprise. The lectures were absolutely excellent and gave you a good sense of how law interacts with technology. The law is ever changing so the instructors try to educate in such a way that doesn't focus on current laws but more of an underlying theme that can be applied to a broad sense when it comes to tech. The material didn't feel out of date and the 2 professors made the material enjoyable.

The grades were made up of 10% Ed discussion, 20% quizzes, 25% acquisition project, 35% code analysis project, and 10% written assignments.

Ed and quizzes are self-explanatory. Participate and watch the lectures and you'll do fine. The written assignments are proctored assignments where you try to reword and understand a prompt into layman's (not tech savvy) language. The acquisition project is where you'll compare 2 tech companies and explain how one of them may go about acquiring the other. Kind of basic report type of format. The coding analysis will have you compare 2 IDEs of your choice and talk about possible issues with infringement. This project was excellent and forced you dig deep about each IDE. Its look and feel, its source code, its directories and how they interact, and so on. The rubric was a little unclear so i found myself working on the projects significantly more than other assignments. We had over a month for the acquisition project and a little over 2 weeks for the coding analysis project. I prob spent like 15ish hours (~10 pages) on the acquisition and 30ish (~20 pages) on the coding analysis project. So the coding project was definitely more pressure.

One of the not as good aspects of the course was the timeline for grading when concerning the projects and written assignments. These were graded weeeeeeks past their due date and even as final grades are some individual assignments were left ungraded. I'm not sure if this is due to the summer schedule or not but just something to prepare for. The TA's were also very responsive so that was also good! Overall, a great class and I'm happy i took it.

Final Grade: A(92.32%).

Pros:

• Very easy course overall. It only took about 5 hours a week.
• The topics were actually pretty interesting, and I enjoyed learning about them.
• Great course to pair with another class since the workload is manageable.

Cons:

• The expectations for the writing assignments were confusing. Sometimes you lost points for explaining too much, but other times a basic explanation was not enough.
• TAs did not always answer questions, which made assignment expectations even more unclear.

Quizzes (20% ) - 95.56%: The quizzes were open-book, so you could go back through the lectures to find answers if you did not remember something. They were straightforward as long as you kept up with the material.

Writing assignments (10%) - 88.13%: The assignments seemed simple at first, but grading felt inconsistent. Sometimes I lost points for over explaining, while other times I lost points for being too brief. I was never really sure what the TA expectations were, and even after asking questions, I did not get much clarification.

Discussions (10%) - 100%: Pretty much free points. There was one discussion each week, 12 total, and you mainly just shared your thoughts on the topic.

Code Analysis Project Project(35%) - 84%: This project involved writing an essay comparing two IDEs. I thought I explained my points well, and I followed the feedback I received on the proposal, but I still did not do as well as I expected. I spent around 20 hours working on it over the course of a month. The project itself was not difficult conceptually, but the grading expectations felt unclear, similar to the other writing assignments.

Acquisition Project)(25%) - 100%: This project was much easier than the Code Analysis Project. You had to write an essay about a company you believed should acquire another company and explain why. I honestly enjoyed this assignment because it felt more creative and practical, and the expectations were clearer overall.

Very interesting course material, but if you're taking this course as something to pair with a harder class, then the max difficulty of the class to pair with should be no more than medium. I paired this course with GA (difficulty: hard), and I definitely don't recommend that. Barely got a B in GA (that itself was a miracle), and though I thought I put a reasonable amount of effort into this class's papers given that I also needed to focus on GA, it apparently wasn't enough for what the TAs expected. Most reviews say you should easily get an A in this course, but I got a B. TL;DR: This isn't just some blow-off class to easily get 3 extra credits in a Fall/Spring semester like some other reviews may say it is. The material is great, but you will need to WORK if you want a good grade on the papers.

The lecture material was quite interesting, but to be honest, I found the project work quite displeasurable. I doubt most students will feel this way - to a normal student, maybe the non-coding assignments are a nice break from other classes. But, I think it's worth putting the word out for others like myself: if you find programming assignments fairly easy in general but struggle to stay motivated when the assignment isn't technical, you may have a tougher experience than others have indicated.

It's not like I would even disagree with the sentiment that this is an easy course. When there's no project to be working on, the class is <4 hrs/wk of commitment, no sweat. The problem is, the projects are fairly long reports that can get quite involved if you're trying to get a good grade. One of mine was >20 pages, and I felt quite miserable working on it by the end. We were not given any clear indication of what level of effort would be considered acceptable for that assignment, so part of that was me erring on the side of caution.

Granted, also, that there were only two such papers in the course, so the average workload was still fairly low. But those papers easily took 16-24 hours each, and it was a complete slog for me. I did not have any fun at all working on those papers, although I really enjoyed watching the lectures. So, if you're on the fence about taking this course because you're used to programming assignments and this is "different," consider my experience a data point in favor of taking something else - in my case, this was me trying something a little different, and it was not nearly as fun for me as I had hoped. But your mileage may vary, of course.

TLDR: The lectures and assignments were excellent, but the course was super light. If you are looking for an interesting course with a low workload, then this is the perfect course.

Finished the course with an A. Spent around 7 hours per week on average, but the workload varied from week to week.

Course Structure: Each week, we had to watch lectures, respond to a discussion post, and take a quiz. There were two projects, an acquisition project and a code analysis project.

Lectures: The lectures were fantastic. The majority of the course was focused on intellectual property, which could be a dry topic. The instructors did an excellent job at making the content interesting and exciting. I watched the lectures at 2x speed, so it only took about 30 to 60 minutes per week to watch the lectures and take notes.

Quizzes: The quizzes were open book and open note and were fairly straightforward. The quizzes were timed, but they only took about 15 to 30 minutes to complete.

Discussion post: I really liked the discussion posts. While they only took about 30-60 minutes per week to complete, they required us to really think about the material.

Projects: I enjoyed both projects. The acquisition project took about 30-40 hours to complete. The code analysis project took about 20-25 hours to complete. We were given about 4 weeks to complete the acquisition project and 2 weeks to complete the code analysis project. I found the acquisition project to be more interesting, but I felt like the code analysis project required more knowledge of the course material.

Overall: For about half the course, I was only spending around 2-3 hours per week on the course. When I was working on the projects, I spent about 10-15 hours per week, but we only worked on projects for half of the course. If I took this course in the fall or spring semester, I imagine that the workload would be even lower. Even though the workload is light, I really enjoyed this course and learned a lot about computer law.

I love the teaching team. So fun, great course that can be useful when you thinking about developing your next big ideas.

Highly recommend. The course is designed to be efficient in the sense that it teaches you a lot with very little workload. Especially useful for people thinking about being the founder of a startup since most things are taught from that perspective. Week with highest workload took me 6.5 hours, while I was able to completely ignore the course a couple of other weeks.

Spring 2024 -- doubled this course with GA and found it to be very manageable, ended with a strong A.

Prof. Huffman and Prof. Omojokun are top-notch instructors. They make the course engaging and accessible. I found the course content to be pretty interesting and worthwhile. From my experience with startups, small business valuations (aside from team, and product-market fit) are heavily indexed on existing patents, IP, and copyrights. If you're ever planning to spin up your own tech company, I think this is a good introduction to some of the legal dynamics at play.

Courseload is very manageable, but some expectations could be clarified better. For example, you must complete paper outlines before you submit the full thing, which gives you a chance to get TA feedback. I didn't realize these were actually graded (I think one of them was worth something like 8% of your total grade?), which caught me off guard. I actually had a higher grade in GA than this course for a good chunk of the semester. My advice is to go over the assignment instructions with a fine-tooth comb and make sure you hit everything that's being asked of you, because it's more of a rubric than topics to consider.

Discussions on Ed were graded, albeit pretty leniently compared to the written assignments. I saw some students clearly post copy/paste answers from ChatGPT (bulleted lists of vague responses and all), which I felt ambivalent about given the rigor of this program. My hope is that low-effort posts like that are policed more going forward.

Weekly quizzes were pretty straightforward open-book/open-notes. A few tricky questions but pretty easy to get an +80.

TAs were generally pretty good. Adrian seemed to be the one running the show and was very active and response on Ed. Seemed like a great guy.

Overall I got what I wanted from this course and it paired nicely with a harder one. I'm giving it a 4/5 because I think a few kinks could be worked out with clearer assignment instructions and how the written assignments will be graded. Whenever I got grader feedback, it was usually (to paraphase) "you're missing _____ section" or a generic "Nice job!" which felt too formulaic. It'd be nice to get more detailed feedback if each section is going to be scrutinized in the grading.

This is a wonderful class that will definitely bring you practical insights for your next venture. On top of Digital Marketing, AI Ethics, these are the classes that bring real value to my business, instead of coding, coding, writing papers for the sake of doing it. It is more efficient if you take it in addition with another course during Fall or Spring. Why take those 3 easy classes alone during the summer? There are two projects: business acquisition and code analysis, don't fake them, do the research. Do it seriously, you will be fine. The lecture quizzes are fine too, as long as you watched them. They are well done.

Not sure if this class has changed in recent semester, but I'd say the workload was around 10 hours/week. Leaving this review to balance out the 2 hour ones. I'd say its similar to taken Computer Networks, ML4T, and InfoSec in terms of workload.

Still a great class. I learned a lot and I felt like there was enough material where one could dive in and spend extra time if needed. I'd only recommend if you are interested in the topic though as I dont think this class would really be helpful in a traditional SWE career. If you are looking for an easy class, there are just as easy classes that are helpful.

I took it because i'm interested in the field and it was great

Amazing class, could not recommend it enough. The weekly lectures with quiz associated were very fair, and you will do well as long as you pay enough attention and take notes. The two projects were also very fair and interesting in their own right, allowing you to express your knowledge and interests in connection with the course materials. The amount of work every week is extremely reasonable, unlike other courses in this program that I feel saddle you with work just because. The videos are all extremely high quality and very entertaining, and I see myself referring back to them for years to come.

This class is easy. Really, really easy. I cannot see how a native English speaker could get less than a B in this class assuming they didn't skip assignments. Assignments: weekly lecture quizzes (the lectures open up week by week), weekly discussion board posts (need 10/12 for full credit), 2 major writing assignments on corporate acquisition and code analysis for infringement. Generous extra credit on discussion board and code analysis project. I wanted to pair GA with something to maintain momentum and this was that class. It honestly was pretty interesting and now I know more than I did before about intellectual property so I don't regret it.

I really liked this course. The majority of the grade is quizzes (30%), an acquisition project (25%), and a code analysis (35%) project. The quizzes are weekly quizzes that relate directly to that module. The quizzes/modules are released at the start of each week, so you cannot work ahead. The quizzes are multiple choice and while the information directly relates to the module, they can sometimes be tricky/ambiguous. The assignments are pretty open-ended and do not include a rubric. This can make it challenging to know if you included everything required. Both assignments have an outline due, so it does help that feedback is provided on the outline. The average time per week increases when the assignments are due, but my time estimate applies to the average week with a module/quiz. There is also 10% of your grade based on class discussions on Ed Discussion.

Very easy but interesting topics. Helpful TAs. Opportunities to earn extra credit. Recommend if you want an easy A.

It was interesting but very surface level info. The quizzes were extremely easy and the projects were pretty leniently graded. I'm not sure this warrants 3 credits towards a Masters degree unfortunately, it felt like an undergrad elective.