Copyright Law

Westlaw tries to give a specialized search for IP materials. That filtering is done by selecting the "Intellectual Property" link to the right of the two columns covered in an "All Content" search.

A search for the word "obviousness" from 'All Content' filtered to 'Cases' and the 'Supreme Court' will return 177 cases. However, the same search run from the Intellectual Property page, with "Cases" selected and again filtered to the Supreme Court returns only 88. It is therefore recommended that you run IP specific searches after having navigated to the Intellectual Property page.

Practical Law materials are practitioner focused. However, the main subject areas include an overview of legislation on that topic. These and the general materials can be useful for law students when used together with secondary sources at the beginning of a research project. The Practical Law IP materials also include practice notes, pleading and transactional forms, state by state breakdowns, and practice checklists.

A persistent link is placed to the right of the two "All Content" columns on the main WLN search/browse page. After selecting the IP page you can search or browse the categories from either the topics listing shown below, or

browse and search within results from the resource types listing.

These are the listings in the main Intellectual Property page, selected from the third column of the WLN home page, as shown at left.

The IP secondary sources page is not IP category specific. You can, however, find information in the different category headings: ALR, Text and Treatises, Law Reviews and Journals, Forms, and Newsletters for all the major IP categories. The > "All..."  < links will bring up many more materials than those listed in the main headings.

Practioner Insights page, selected from 'Practice Areas' tab of main menu, then > Intellectual Property. Links are posted on the page for browsing various IP material types. It is more of a current awareness materials directory than a search portal.

You can Shepardize, KeyCite and BCite patent numbers and applications in all three major legal research databases. As with cases and topics, alerts can also be established.