MARKETING AND LAW
Instructional goals
Train students on the different legal issues related to marketing.
Intended learning outcomes
Ability to interpret and understand the legal framework related to different marketing activities, as well as to interact with concrete legal challenges that might arise over the course of marketing activities.
KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING: The student will be able to analyze and understand the main phenomena described and analyzed during the course, in relation to the behavior of individuals in the development of legally compliant marketing strategies.
APPLYING KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING: At the end of the course, the student must be able to use the tools of theoretical analysis for an advanced understanding of legal issues in marketing.
MAKING JUDGEMENTS: The student will acquire the ability to judge in an autonomous way the lawfulness of a marketing conduct, also in relation to specific applications.
COMMUNICATION SKILLS: The student will acquire the specific language of legal analysis in order to communicate precisely the concepts learned.
LEARNING SKILLS: The student will learn the methodology of analysis of the main problems related to the legal issues in marketing.
Course Contents
Law and marketing; privacy, customer profiling and database management; law and economics of franchising; competition rules and distribution agreements; trademarks protection; unfair competition; industrial design.
Reference Books
Teaching materials (slides and selected papers) will be available at the outset of the course.
Teaching Methods
Frontal teaching, seminars, interactive discussion, case studies.
Professionals from corporations and international law firms will participate to the course giving seminars on specific topics.
Assessment Method
Case study and group presentations; written exam (open book).
If a student chooses to take the midterm test, then he/she has the option to take the final test only on the material related to the second part of the course. This option is only available in the first examination date after the end of the course (winter session).
Thesis assignment criteria
Relevance of the topic proposed.
Week 1
Introduction to the course. Law and marketing. Overview of the main areas covered during the course (privacy; competition law; trademarks and copyright).
Introduction to privacy: constitutional value, relevance in marketing activities, and the GDPR revolution.
How emerging technologies are affecting our approach to privacy and data protection: IoT and Artificial Intelligence.
Analysis of a simulated case to understand the legal implications of a marketing strategy
Week 2
The economics of privacy in the data market: circulation of information and consumer rights’ under the GDPR (legibility, automated decision-making, data retention and data correction).
Focus: right to oblivion and liability of data platforms. How to cope with tech-giants in the information society.
The problem of intercontinental Data Flow and the Privacy Shield
Simulation of a case related to privacy and data retention in the context of the development of a new app for smartphones
Week 3
Principles of antitrust law and economics. Platforms, two- and multi-sided markets.
The law and economics of franchising. Vertical integration and methods of distribution. Agency and independent distributors.
Critical analysis of a distribution agreement contract
Week 4
Competition rules and distribution agreements. Abuse of economic dependence. Vertical agreements Regulation.
Territorial protection. Resale price maintenance. Selective distribution agreements. Non-compete obligations. Refusal to supply and export bans
Critical analysis of the evaluation and research conducted after the Week 3 Contractual analysis
Week 5
Cartels; exploitative and exclusionary pricing policies: price discrimination; predatory pricing; most favoured nation (MFN) clause, price matching and English clause; discounts and rebates; tying and bundling
Moot court simulation on the evaluation of a cartel agreement
Week 6
Introduction to industrial law: overview on Trademarks, Unfair competition; Unfair Trading Practices and Copyright
Intermediate Evaluation Test on Privacy and Antitrust
Week 7
The economics of trademarks: the economic function and the social costs of trademarks. Type of marks. Requirements for protection
simulated development of a market strategy for a trademark, compliant with the relevant regulatory framework
Week 8
Conventional and non-conventional trademarks: logos, packages, product design, trade dress, shapes, colors, sound, smell. Functionality doctrine; deceptive trademarks; confusion and vulgarization of a trademark: dilution by tarnishment and blurring; collective and European trademarks; non-registered trademarks.
Continuation of Week 7 simulation work and group presentation
Week 9
Unfair competition; Confusion-based liability: the factors analysis for likelihood of confusion; Denigration of competitors’ products and claim of non-existent merits; lawful/unlawful magnification of products’ characteristics; deceptive communications; False and Comparative Advertising.
study case on unfair competition
Week 10
Unfair Commercial Practices: aggressive and misleading practices; Online Behavioral Advertising; use of Soft and Big data for commercial practices; direct marketing; unfair trading practices and power asymmetry in B2B relationships.
Group work on AI, automated advertising and potential misleading commercial practices
Week 11
Copyright: concept of property and justification of copyright as an intellectual property; the elements of copyrightable subject matters; authorship – ownership & licensing and assignment of Copyrighted work; infringements of copyright; the new Copyright Directive and its impact.
Continuation of Week 10 Group work and presentation
Week 12
The duality between marketing and market power
Marketing myopia: the danger of a short-sighted approach in recognizing and changing to consumer wants, and how regulation should tackle it.
Marketing, and regulation, of emerging technologies: a paradigm shift in the interaction between law and commercial activity.
Overview of the main topics of the course; Concluding remarks.
Frontal teaching, seminars, interactive discussion, case studies.
Professionals from corporations and international law firms will participate to the course giving seminars on specific topics.