Archive for the ‘IP’ Category
Monday, June 30th, 2008
Today the Conference Board of Canada gave Canada another "D" grade for innovation. As indicated on the Board website, Canada is at the back of the class. As last year, where Canada also got a "D" grade, this should be another alarming call to government, industry, and members of the public that we ...
Posted in Innovation, Commercialization, IP, General | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
On June 12, 2008 the Ministers of Industry Canada and Canadian Heritage tabled Bill C-61 in Parliament. The Bill is expected to go to Second Reading at some point in the Fall at which stage will go to committee for review.
You can find the Bill at:
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Docid=3570473&file=4
Since the Bill's debut, copyright has ...
Posted in copyright reform, Copyright, General | No Comments »
Sunday, June 1st, 2008
There are rumours that a new copyright bill is imminent. Copyright issues are increasingly gaining public prominence and there are views of every stripe.
See below for a distinct view by Barry Sookman, copyright expert and co-chair of the Technology Group at McCarthy Tétrault, on the copyright debate as we await the ...
Posted in copyright reform, Digital Downloads, Music Industry, Internet Sharing, Copyright | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008
Christopher Hansen, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, has become involved in a patent case for an "abstract idea". The patent in dispute belongs to Bernard L. Bilski:
"In 2006, Bilski sought a patent for his idea that the weather risk involved in buying and selling commodities could be ...
Posted in Patentability, Patents, IP | No Comments »
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
Suppose there are two researchers, X and Y, who separately study the same thing, say, new energy. X wants a patent right for a financial gain while Y wants to make his results freely accessible to the public. Unfortunately, X comes up with a result one day before Y. Now, ...
Posted in Commercialization, IP | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008
In 1999, between 1.3 and 2.1 billion people did not have access to essential medicines (around 30% of the world’s population), with most of these people being concentrated in Africa and India.[1] In May 2004, after pressure from Canadian civil society groups and Stephen Lewis (the UN Special Envoy on ...
Posted in Pharmaceutical Drugs, Cross Border Issues, Patents, IP | 3 Comments »
Monday, March 31st, 2008
During Professor Bruce Ziff’s discussion on Private Property, he referred to Garrett Hardin’s theory on the Tragedy of the Commons. The common hypothetical relates to the relationship of farmers overgrazing on common land. Since ...
Posted in Patents, IP | 1 Comment »
Monday, March 31st, 2008
Let’s say I want to sublet my on-campus room for the summer. I’m paying $1,000/month. Because staying on campus is extremely convenient for whatever reason, but it is difficult to find a place, someone proposed me $1,200/month for the sublet, while others proposed less than $1,000/month. Which offer should I ...
Posted in Commercialization, IP | No Comments »
Monday, March 31st, 2008
Once again on February 11th 2008, the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) released its annual recommendations which it submits to the United States Trade Representative (USTR). The name taken by the IIPA may be misleading, as it can hardly be considered “international” in scope. The IIPA is essentially a ...
Posted in IP, Copyright | 1 Comment »
Friday, March 28th, 2008
Under Canadian patent law, the scope of patentable subject matter is still expanding. But under U.S. patent law, “anything under the sun made by man” is patentable. This has come to include patents for computer software.
Software patents raise a debate over which algorithms are novel, and which are non-obvious. Some ...
Posted in Commercialization, Originality, Technology, Patentability, IP, Patents, Copyright | No Comments »
