Cheap Thomas' Sum and Substance Audio Set on Intellectual Property (1st Edition) (Sum & Substance CD Series) (Book) (John R. Thomas) Price

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Customer Reviews of Thomas' Sum and Substance Audio Set on Intellectual Property (1st Edition) (Sum & Substance CD Series)

Excellent material - decent "entertain level"
I've listened to about 10 audio CD's for law school courses. Either the speaker is absolutely dry as hell (to the point where the CD's should be outlawed in the car for risk of falling asleep at the wheel) or the material covered is extremely sparse, out of date, or outright wrong. This is one of the best. Covers the most important topics, is presented logically, he goes into some intersting cases. The best is that the CD's are very well indexed, so you can easily jump to a section. (Unlike other CD's which are one friggin track, so you have to listen to the whole CD straight through.)

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Not much sum, no substance
I have purchased dozens of books and CDs from Amazon, a few of which disappointed me, but none has ever motivated me to write a negative review... until now. This is the third Sum&Substance CD set I've purchased. I was thrilled with the first two, filled with informative and even gripping, eloquent prose by professors who knew their subject so well they could speak extemporaneously about it for hours. This one, however, is unlistenable. <
>John Thomas demonstrates the worst of what engineers have to offer the legal profession - stilted, awkward writing focused on form over substance. I say "writing" because that's all this is: a paper written by the author and read back by him in the most droning, labored, deadpan voice you can imagine, peppered with a few feigned "chuckles" in an attempt to sound impromptu. His contrived, unnatural speech, inexplicably devoid of contractions and rife with strained pronunciation (hey, John, it's pronounced "inVENtr", not "IN-VEN-TORE". What are you, Robbie the Robot?) really starts to grate on your ear after a while. <
>"Well, surely he can at least read his own writing well enough," you say? Au contraire. Because he's not actually listening to himself as he reads, he constantly stresses the wrong words in his sentences, forcing the listener to rewind and listen again to decipher his message. He even skips lines from the text he's reading, making some sentences completely non-sensical, although it doesn't seem to phase him a bit. <
>Beyond the clumsy prose, John completely misses all opportunities to enliven his discussion with juicy IP case law, starring household names and well-known products. He provides laundry list after laundry list of irrelevant or unimportant legal "factors" without elucidating the underlying public policy issues that are of true import (and more memorable). At one point, he gives a list of 12 relatively arbitrary "factors" for something. What am I supposed to do with that? Write them down on my steering wheel? (I mostly listen to these CDs while I'm driving, as do most people I suspect.) I can't say enough about how bad this CD set is. I'm just glad this guy isn't my professor.

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A MUST HAVE FOR SCHECTER & THOMAS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
John THomas ( co-author of the superbe Schecter & Thomas - IP casebook/treatise ) has done an absolute masterful job on these CD's. One of the problems with an IP Overview course is that 1) the topic is vast & 2) it is usually presented in an illogical sequence ( for exam problem solving ). Here, Thomas presents the topics in a logical "problem analysis" flow. His discussions were incredibly succinct - like a laser. He encapsules 1 hour of classroom discussion - into mere minutes. Better, THomas's lectures track his book & he even uses the case squibs as discussion points & examples. He presents this material much like the old "Audio Text TOur" law series - which are now unfortunately out of print. I kicked ass on very challenging comprehensive 3 docrine final exam. I COULD NOT HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT THESE CDS!! I CANNOT RECOMMEND THESE CDS ENOUGH! - THANKS JOHN THOMAS !!!!