Cultivating Intellectual Property Education in the Electronics Engineering Curriculum: A Case Study in Integrated Circuit Design

A survey on engineering students’ attitude toward intellectual property (IP) education has been conducted in several China’s universities, revealing the need for more effective teaching and learning methods. To improve the students’ IP awareness and the capability of innovative learning, a small module of patent and circuit design case study has been included in an engineering course, namely, radio-frequency integrated circuit (IC) design, which is offered to senior undergraduate or postgraduate students in a top engineering university in China. Along with the instruction of the RFIC design techniques, the concepts of the IP for the ICs are presented, followed by the analysis of innovative circuits to explore potential legal issues. The feedback of the students suggests that the curriculum is considerably helpful to enrich the knowledge of engineering students in both the design technique and IP awareness.