Curriculum

This course covers the core laws surrounding hiring, managing, and firing workers, with a focus on small or high-tech businesses. Specific topics include the employee/independent contractor line in the gig economy, the employment-at-will rule, employee privacy, anti-discrimination laws, leave and benefits requirements, and protection of trade secrets and non–competition covenants.

This course is designed to familiarize students with common issues that arise in startups, and how they are addressed by attorneys who structure high-growth (principally start-up) corporate transactions. It will address that portion of the transactional practice not covered in Technology Transactions. Going beyond the black letter law, it will draw on the expertise of lawyers and law firms with substantial experience in the area who will review the principal transactional documents in detail and how they address the principal issues that arise in high-growth corporate transactions. Although topics may be modified over each semester, a wide range of topics is expected to be covered, including: Choice of Entity; Founders’ Agreement(s); Terms of Preferred Stock, including Liquidation Preferences and Conversion Mechanics; Basic Deal Structuring; Tax Issues/Benefits for Entrepreneurs/Startups; Series A Financing; and Initial Public Offerings.Students who complete this course will have a strong foundational understanding of the principal non-technology transactions that arise around high-growth/start-up firms and how they are structured and documented. They will be able to think through the principal legal issues that are likely to arise and formulate strategies in response.

A continuation of High-Growth Corporate Transactions I. This course is designed to familiarize students with common issues that arise in startups, and how they are addressed by attorneys who structure high-growth (principally start-up) corporate transactions. It will address that portion of the transactional practice not covered in Technology Transactions. Going beyond the black letter law, it will draw on the expertise of lawyers and law firms with substantial experience in the area who will review the principal transactional documents in detail and how they address the principal issues that arise in high-growth corporate transactions. Although topics may be modified over each semester, a wide range of topics is expected to be covered, including: Choice of Entity; Founders’ Agreement(s); Terms of Preferred Stock, including Liquidation Preferences and Conversion Mechanics; Basic Deal Structuring; Tax Issues/Benefits for Entrepreneurs/Startups; Series A Financing; and Initial Public Offerings.Students who complete this course will have a strong foundational understanding of the principal non-technology transactions that arise around high-growth/start-up firms and how they are structured and documented. They will be able to think through the principal legal issues that are likely to arise and formulate strategies in response.

This is a survey course in intellectual property (IP) law. It covers the what, when, who, how, and why of IP: what kinds of information can be protected, when these rights arise, who owns them, how they are enforced, and why the legal system goes to all this trouble. We will perform comparative anatomy on bodies of law including trade secret, patent, copyright, trademark, false advertising, and rights of publicity, dissecting them to understand them on their own terms and in relationship to each other. Students will be able to understand how each field of IP thinks about the world, to identify what kinds of information are and are not covered by different types of IP, and to advise creators, innovators, entrepreneurs, and citizens how to deal with IP assets and threats in a wide variety of technological settings. Although this course is suitable for those who have not previously taken a course in IP, it will not be redundant for those who have. Our goal will be to understand the deep structure of intellectual property law, not to memorize doctrinal details or debate abstract points of legal theory.

This is a survey course in Internet law, with particular emphasis on privacy and security. It is designed to teach lawyers what they need to know to work effectively with computer technologists, and vice versa. Topics covered may vary based on recent events, but will typically include jurisdiction, free speech, privacy, cybersecurity, e-commerce, digital property, intermediary liability and network neutrality. What unites these disparate areas of law is that, in each of them, computer and network technologies are challenging settled legal understandings in similar ways. We will explore these recurring patterns of legal disruption and predict how they will play out online and offline. Students who complete this course will be able to sort out the issues of a complex case to identify what’s really at stake, think through the likely legal implications of a new technology, and formulate successful legal strategies in the messy world of big data, strong encryption, copyright bots, anonymous jerks, and the Streisand Effect.

One or more students will be paired with a lawyer and/or law firm with substantial experience in technology and high-growth corporate transactions. Students will work under the supervision of the lawyer and/or law firm in providing legal support to student and other project teams, including studio teams, that are assigned to it. Through the law team process, students will have an opportunity to practice what they learn in the classroom, as well as become familiar with a range of legal and regulatory issues (and solutions) relating to technology and high-growth corporate transactions.

This course is designed to familiarize students with common issues that arise in technology transactions, and how they are addressed by attorneys who structure such transactions. Going beyond the black letter law, it will draw on the expertise of lawyers and law firms with substantial experience in the area who will review the principal transactional documents in detail and describe how they address the principal issues that arise in technology transactions. Although topics may be modified over each semester, a wide range of topics is expected to be covered, including: Formation Issues; Initiating a Technology Transaction; Common Transactions for Early Stage Companies; Patent Prosecution; License Agreements; Technology in M&A Transactions; and Open Source Software. Students who complete this course will have a strong foundational understanding of the principal technology transactions and how they are structured and documented. They will be able to think through the principal legal issues that are likely to arise and formulate strategies in response.

This course is designed to familiarize students with common issues that arise in technology transactions, and how they are addressed by attorneys who structure such transactions. Going beyond the black letter law, it will draw on the expertise of lawyers and law firms with substantial experience in the area who will review the principal transactional documents in detail and describe how they address the principal issues that arise in technology transactions. Although topics may be modified over each semester, a wide range of topics is expected to be covered, including: Formation Issues; Initiating a Technology Transaction; Common Transactions for Early Stage Companies; Patent Prosecution; Issues Arising in International Transactions; Technology in M&A Transactions; and Open Source Software.

This course features a weekly guest practitioner for a provocative, closed-door discussion with students. The guest practitioners are active entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, social entrepreneurs, engineers, designers, artists, VCs, lawyers, writers, ethicists, and other diverse leaders who are affecting society through their entrepreneurial efforts. Conversations take place in the Cornell Tech Studio and are moderated each week by a randomly assigned group of students who come prepared with questions and discussion topics. This is not a lecture: it’s a weekly wake-up call.

This course deals broadly with leadership – of teams, projects, products, businesses, and communities. The course will pay special attention to leadership in the context of digital transformation and its social and economic impacts. Students will learn effective team-building and teamwork strategies, communication and presentation skills, and best practices for building a collaborative, creative and open culture in the workplace. As part of a personal development process, toolkits and exercises will be provided to promote critical thinking and moral reasoning skills. Sessions on social and multicultural awareness and sensitivity will equip students to be global leaders in a digitally-transformed world. In short, this course will cover all aspects of how students can become leaders in a digital economy.

This studio-based course helps students learn about and develop product management (PM) skills by putting those abilities immediately to use on their Startup Studio projects. In each session, students learn about a different aspect of product management, product design, or technology development, then practice applying it to their Startup Studio projects, working in the Studio with their project teams and with the help and critique of the practitioner instructors and sometimes visiting practitioners. By the end of the semester, students will have developed and practiced many of the fundamental product management skills required to develop new technology products, and their Startup Studio projects will have greatly benefited from the practice.

In Product Studio you and a team of your classmates will respond to a “Company Challenge” by developing, testing, and presenting a new product or business idea. Previous challenges have been posed by organizations as diverse as the Robin Hood Foundation, Uber, Weight Watchers and Bloomberg.

This studio-based course helps students develop their ability to imagine, recognize, develop and improve startup ideas. In each class, students learn a different approach to product ideation or product critique, then practice that approach, working in many different teams — often with the advice of visiting entrepreneurs, VCs, domain experts, and other practitioners. Students invent and explore hundreds of startup ideas, and help each other evaluate and improve those ideas. By the end of the course, students self-organize into co-founding teams around specific startup ideas that they will pursue in Startup Studio the following semester.

In Startup Studio you and a team of your classmates will develop your own new product or startup idea. You’ll experience the entire process, from developing your idea, to prototyping and testing, to pitching to investors. You can even apply for a Startup Award that will provide funding and other support to help you turn your Startup Studio project to a real business.