A treaty to improve access to copyrighted materials for the visually impaired was recently introduced at World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) by Brazil, Ecuador, and Paraguay. The treaty received no direct objections, however, different opinions were expressed as to how to treat the proposal and other limitations and exceptions in the future. For many this seems like […]
In a recent blog post by Prof. Shamnad Basheer at Spicy IP, he discussed the issue of whether or not patent lawyers should be required to achieve a certain level of training in science/engineering before being admitted to the patent bar. In his discussion, he addressed the question of whether individual academic institutions should be […]
Does Google know what you’re doing online? Eighty-eight percent of the time, the answer might be yes. Earlier this month a group of graduate students at UC Berkeley released a detailed report on the extent of online tracking and the disconnect between reality and user expectations. The data in the report was collected from various […]
In general, intellectual property (IP) rights encourage innovation by providing creators with an economic incentive to develop and share ideas through a form of a temporary monopoly. Proponents of traditional IP rights believe that individual creators should not only have a chance to profit from their works but also control how they are used. In […]
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced its decision this past Thursday (4 June 2009) to extend the exemption of new media broadcasting from regulation. After considering the current state of broadcasting in new media, the CRTC felt that while new media is of growing importance, it currently does not pose any threat to […]
Arnold Ceballos practices intellectual property law with Pain & Ceballos LLP in Vaughan, Ontario. He obtained his LLM from Osgoode Hall Law School. Like many intellectual property lawyers, I am back in my office recovering from the whirlwind that is the annual meeting of the International Trademark Association. Held in Seattle from May 16 to […]
James Gannon is an Osgoode Hall alumnus and is currently an articling student at McCarthy Tétrault. Jonathan Frydman recently completed his second year of the J.D. program at Osgoode Hall Law School. James and Jonathan took notes at a recent conference they attended and they report on the speaker presentations in this blog. On Friday, […]
The print media, newspapers in particular, appears to be hanging by a thread all across the United States and some of the big names in the field are contemplating the ‘toll booth’ approach regarding their online websites. The causes of this outcome can be traced back to the decisions made in 1990s to make the […]
Currently, China has an estimated 70 million bloggers posting on a wide range of subjects. In January, the country’s number of internet users was estimated at 298 million, the most of any nation in the world. Unfortunately, China’s internet censorship is one of the most pervasive and sophisticated in the world. Bloggers’ freedom of expression […]
Consider the following scenario: The sales team at a large software company is meeting with a particularly hot prospect and is hoping to seal the deal on a big sale of Product X. Things have been going great, but right in the middle of the meeting someone pulls out a printout of a message board […]