The purpose of the course at Bocconi University - Affiliate of Harvard CopyrightX - is to acquire a complete understanding of both European copyright law and North American system so to grasp the differences between the civil law tradition (droit d’auteur) and the common law tradition (copyright). The aim is to provide students with a critical analysis of US copyright law, starting from the theories underpinning its rules to the mechanisms that are typical of this jurisdiction, always maintaining the parallelism with EU copyright discipline. Each of the 12 weeks of the course counts two sessions: (1) a lecture; and (2) a seminar where US and EU decisions related to the topic of the lecture will be discussed, tryng to figure out a comparison, where possible.Then, the materials mainly include US and European case law.For students: please check the syllabus on a reguarly basis: it is a work in progress and it will be costantly updated, also as a consequence of the discussions carried out in the previous sessions.