Instructional goals
Train students in relation to the most important legal issues related to marketing.
Prerequisites
None.
Intended learning outcomes
At the end of the course, students will have a first-class knowledge and understanding of the main legal and economic issues concerning marketing, with specific emphasis on those affecting the high-tech sectors. Students will also have the ability to analyse complex market scenarios and decide how to employ different marketing strategies.
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 dispatched during the course.
Teaching Methods
Frontal teaching, seminars, interactive discussion, case studies.
Assessment Method
Case study presentations; written exam. 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
Marked interest for the Marketing domain. There are no specific requirements for the assignment of a thesis in this course. Candidates are encouraged to come forward with their own proposals of topics and an additional list of arguments is available with the instructor. However, each year several thesis are assigned. Please contact the Professor in due time.
Week 1
Teaching materials (slides and selected papers) will be dispatched during the course. 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.
Week 2
The economics of privacy in the data market: circulation of information and consumer rights’ under the GDPR (legibility, automated decisionmaking, 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.
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.
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.
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.
Week 6
Mid-Term 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.
Week 8
Conventional and non-conventionale 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. Liability for infringements of trademarks law.
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.
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.
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.
Week 12
The duality between market and market power Marketing myopia: the danger of a short-sighted approach in assessing the consumer preferences, and the analysis of how regulation should take into account the different issues. 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.