McBride Honors – Fall 2025 (IP)

August 27, 2025: Begin following Fall Banquet (about 7 PM to 8:50)

1. 1. Review class expectations and preview the semester pace and activities, including off-campus opportunities, and highlight course materials. Develop initial ideas for IP projects (student copyright, student patent, student business model groups).

   2. Professor led discussion of philosophical grounding for the legal structure of intellectual property rights. Review of economic and political framework for the legal structure.

   3. Textbook and web resource overview.

Homework for 9/3.

• • Assigned Reading: Rockman: pp 3-4, 11-16, 566-570, 572

  • Initial reflection (journal) on nature of “intellect” and “property” in your life experience.

  • Bring to class an example of your own artistic creativity (painting, glass sculpture, poem, photo, music …)

September 3, 2025: 6-8:50. Copyright

1. 1. Introduction to Copyright (RAL led overview and discussion)

   2. Student roundtables on samples (shared by students) of creative expressions. Discussion of role of copyright in relation to the student samples.

   3. Exercise: register copyright.

Homework for 9/10.

• • Assigned Reading: Rockman: pp 59-62, 77-81, 91-95, 107-109.

  • Reflection (journal) on your life experience/thoughts on your experience as a creative/artistic being.

  • Bring to class a brief description of an idea you believe is new, novel, useful and non-obvious.

September 10, 2025. Patent

1. 1. Student volunteer to lead summary of the assigned reading.

   2. Student led sharing new, novel, useful and non-obvious concepts.

   3. Initial responses of which ideas could attract support by small groups for further research regarding patent process.

   4. Prof led discussion of economics in the context of patent and copyright.

Homework for 9/17.

• • Assigned Reading: Rockman: pp 659-666. 169, 181-185, 185-193, 235-239, 239-245, 259-271, 271-275, 325-329, 371-375, 375-379, 391-399, 411-417, 455-469. Find a useful Youtube on each (email to me before class).

  • Reflection journal: How do you feel in terms of psyche with respect to your identity as an engineer, about the expectation of bringing forth ideas that are new, useful, novel and non-obvious. How do you compare these expectations with your previous reflection on your identity as a creative person of artistic expressions. Are these identities consistent and mutually supportive?

September 17, 2025 (6-8:50 PM)

1. 1. Student led review of the people and their inventions per the assigned reading and video reviews. Students will express observations on the social utility of the inventions, the experience of the inventors and the relationship between the invention and inventor in terms of the inventor’s life experience, well-being, sense of worth or other lessons learned.

   2. Classroom group exercise: Initiate patent search to locate patents issued to current Mines’ professors; develop list of survey questions for these professors if it would be possible to invite up to three of the inventors to speak to the class about the impact of issuance of a patent on their personal identity/psyche/career/family …

Homework for 9/24:

• • Reflection journal. Do you have any thoughts/empathy for the life experiences of the inventors discussed in class? Is inventing more of a complex challenge to an individual’s psyche than you had anticipated at the outset of the course? In what way does this awareness inform your own sense of your personal journey? Jave you any thoughts about the balance between the individual benefits, social benefits, individual costs and social costs of your own ideas that might fall within rights of patent?

  • Select any person in US history between 1787 and the present who developed an idea that satisfied patent requirements (whether or not a patent issued) but which was either not realized to their benefit or which was exploited in a manner contrary to the general welfare and social good. Be prepared to present a brief description (5-10 minutes) of this situation and what you believe it exemplifies as a challenge to the project of turning ideas into private property.

September 24, 2025: 6-8:50

1. Student led summary: 5-10 minute presentations on the person from history who serves as an example where the potential benefits of patent rights never flourished or where the costs/detriments demonstrated in hindsight the limits and caution engineers should consider as they pursue their own intellectual property rights.

2. Prof led presentation: The business architecture of IP rights:

• • Business Plans (manufacturing or licensing and other foundational questions)

  • Company formation (ownership, finance, liability, creation). Associated documentation (Colorado Sec of State, initial trademark opportunity, domain registration, internal documents, behaving like an entity, management, HR, non-disclosure, works made for hire).

Homework for 10/1: Take the week off!

October 1, 2025: 6-8:50

Guests from the USPTO

Homework for 10/8: Watch “Joy”.

October 8, 2025: 6-8:50

We will initiate our group project (likely 3 projects) where we select 3 principal inventive opportunities to pursue. We will form one company with three divisions, all students with equal responsibilities and opportunities. Each division will prepare a provisional patent application (PPA). The completed draft PPA will be reviewed/revised over a two week timeframe and considered for filing with the USPTO. This class will be a workshop during which students self-organize to divide the work and prepare the provisional patent application.

Homework for 10/15: complete PPA

October 15, 2025: 6-8:50

1. 1. Review, critique and decision on PPA filing, next steps.

   2. Review Trademark Law (prof led).

   3. Student workshop on trademark relating to PPA and student company.

Homework: Homework for October 22, 2025.

• • Assigned Reading: Rockman: pp 659-666.

  • Reflection journal: Bring yourself current. What has the journey from idea to adequate description felt like? Is it worth the trouble? Which ideas can use as a reminder to maintain a steadfast purpose? Is it sufficient that there is a creative source within you close to your sense of identity and purpose, or that this can be a component of career steps, or that you might make money? What keeps you going? Is this something you might just as well not have done at all, except for the exercise to have a learning experience that might be useful in another context in the future? Which has been a better experience – copyright or patent? Why?

October 22, 2025: 6-8:50

Field Trip (SparkFun Electronics)

Homework for 10/29:

• • Describe your response and advancement in perspective on IP following the visit to SparkFun.

  • Additional homework connecting the SparkFun Team and our start-up

October 29, 2025: 6-8:50

Inventor’s Panel: Mines related guests (Select Professors and Industry)

November 5, 2025: 6-8:50

Student Company Review, Assessments, Corrections, Adaptations. Measuring Success and Reflecting on the Meaning of Experience, Collaboration, Contribution and Impact. What are the metrics, data and tools? Do they help us to understand experience?

November 12, 2025: 6-8:50

1. 1. Finding Heroes and Object Lessons. Exploring the boundaries of intellect and its property loosely connected to and sometimes unbound by commerce. Measuring impact.

   2. Students are going to survey the following persons according to a loosely defined set of metrics to develop useful comparison:

• • • Shakespeare, W. Steig, JK Rowling

    • Lin Manuel Miranda and Ben Zeitlin

    • T Swift and Prince

    • Einstein and M. Curie

    • Jefferson, A. Lincoln, H. Hoover, B. Obama, D. Trump

    • Mother Theresa, Dalai Lama and Warren Buffet

Homework for 11/19:

• • • Journal: connect the dots between yourself and some/all of the persons considered with respect.

    • Student Presentation (prep an electronic presentation (slides with photos, A/V, primary sourced docs) to be shared within our group taking any example from the persons above to connect a philosophical observation about a lived-experience of any one of the above persons that you conceive is inspiring, cautionary, illuminating. Your presentation needs to be cohesive (it should have a thesis, a through-line, and a conclusion that is supported by the materials in the slides. It can be entertaining – but it is not intended to be entertainment; it is meant to deliver content to this audience of your peers. It is something you would hope they can carry into their lives as an object lesson or touchstone.

November 19, 2025: 6-8:50

Next week is Thanksgiving. Many of you will be visiting with family and friends. As you do so, are you consciously aware of how their intellect and creativity form a core basis of your connection to one another, and how your creativity and intellect support their lives. What does that look like to you? Does this awareness help shape how you show up thankfully? Does some of the invisible become more apparent? What does sharing actually look like, how does it feel. Is Thanksgiving a holiday meaningfully different than the next major holiday in your own observance? Is it different in terms of how the experience associates to intellectual property?

This week you will have a prof led presentation on comparative forms of social organization vis a vis intellectual property. Who owned/owns the classics (Odyssey, Bible, Native American folktales); what differences animate capitalist, socialist and communist approaches to intellectual property; is there anything we can say about which approach is right, wrong, best/better/worse? Is “intellectual property” a creature of legal fictions or does it have essence? Is it a tool of power, a social construct, a natural right, or a substrate required for a flourishing life? How does bounty from intellectual property relate to the common welfare and balance with rights of inheritance or philanthropy.

This is what stands for living in the midst of clear uncertainties. Being clearly aware of uncertainties allows for more humility at the Thanksgiving gathering. It helps you and your nuttiest relatives. Come back safely.

December 3, 2025: 6-8:50

1. Company meeting. Celebrating your IP; liberating yourselves as the owners, authors, architects, managers, beneficiaries of your minds’ efforts.

2. You are the Directors of the Meeting and decide the manner in which collaboration proceeds, the direction and outcomes you intend, plan and carry-forth.

3. Now what? You tell yourselves, and quietly and politely keep me posted as you would a supportive presence sitting somewhere in the audience of engaged and interested supporters you should remember as a friendly and willing resource.

4. Turn in all your work!