Greg Hagen is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Calgary. While James Thomson's claims to primate embryonic stem cells in U.S. Patent 5,843,780 (granted December 1st, 1998) were finally upheld on reexamination by the U.S. Patent and Trade-mark office in 2008, no Canadian patent was ever granted on these […]
Funding for higher education has always been a touchy topic for politicians. While few dispute that an educated population is beneficial for society, it is often less clear who should foot the bill for this benefit. Of course, a large part of the cost is tuition, but more and more, the costs of textbooks are […]
Wendy Gordon is the Philip S. Beck Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law, and is currently serving as the Bacon-Kilkenny Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law. Now that Apple is removing DRM from its itunes songs, newspapers are trumpeting the move in ways like this: "COPY AN ITUNES […]
Sanjukta Tole is an Osgoode Hall alumnus and practiced with the IP group of a large Vancouver law firm. In 2008, Louis Vuitton Malletier S.A. and Louis Vuitton Canada Inc. (collectively "LV"), the famous luxury goods maker, made headlines when it was awarded damages of over $1,000,000, the highest amount ever awarded in a counterfeit […]
Carys Craig is an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. In copyright law, the term "public domain" is commonly used to describe the sphere in which contents are free from copyright protection. The typical example is that of a work whose protection has expired, or one that fails to meet the minimum requirements. Such […]
Ikechi Mgbeoji is an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. An interesting phenomenon in civilised circles these days is the wonderful ability of both the popular and academic commentariat to reduce or at least purport to reduce complex issues to convenient and potable sound-bites. Perhaps, the benevolence of "experts" in sparing members of the public […]
Graeme Dinwoodie is a Professor of Law at the Chicago-Kent College of Law and is an IP Osgoode Research Affiliate. The well-known marks doctrine provides an exception to the general rule of territoriality and will protect a foreign mark that is well-known but not used in the United States. Although it has long been assumed that […]
Chris Castle is Managing Partner of Christian L. Castle Attorneys, a law firm specializing in music industry issues, content based technologies and public policy. Ever encounter people who think that illegal downloading can be solved by "turning off" the Internet? That makes about as much sense as "voluntary collective licensing" or "ISP licensing" (used interchangeably). […]
Simon Fodden (Professor Emeritus, Osgoode Hall Law School) is founder of the Canadian cooperative law blog Slaw (http://www.slaw.ca). Five years ago, Joel Tenenbaum, now a 24-year-old graduate student at BU, may have downloaded seven tunes via a P2P network. At least that's what the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) alleges -- and now it wants […]
Nada Basir is a PhD candidate at the Schulich School of Business at York University in the area of Strategic Management and Policy. The increased use of patents has sparked a critical debate not only at the legal level, but also across the science, management and policy literature. Whereas IP studies were once for the law academics, […]