MARKETING AND LAW
Instructional goals
Train students on the most important legal issues related to marketing.
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 (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
Marked interest for the topics. Passing of the exam.
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.
Week 2
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.
Week 3
Antitrust. Platforms, two- and multi-sided
markets.
The contracts 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
Mid-Term test on Privacy.
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
Introduction to industrial law: overview on Trademarks, Unfair
competition; Unfair Trading Practices and Copyright
Week 7
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
Mid-Term test on Antitrust.
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.