On May 4th, the Ontario Bar Association presented “Intellectual Property Issues in a Non-IP Context”. This conference brought together professionals from several practice areas, such as criminal law, insurance law and employment law. The focus of the conference was to draw attention to the variety of IP issues that exist within many areas of the […]
On April 17th, Taser International Inc. filed a 102-page complaint in the U.S. District Court (District of Arizona) against Linden Research Inc., creators of the wildly popular online video game Second Life. Taser (who manufactures the stun gun of the same name) alleges that Linden allowed its users to infringe on its trademark by creating […]
The controversial doctrine of inequitable conduct has once again garnered much attention in the patent law community due to the recent denial of certiorari by the US Supreme Court in Aventis Pharma v. Amphastar. The doctrine of inequitable conduct allows courts to exercise equitable discretion to find a patent unenforceable if the applicant has failed to exercise his or […]
Chris Castle is Managing Partner of Christian L. Castle Attorneys, Los Angeles and San Francisco. You’ve probably heard the expression “the long tail” used by Web 2.0 cognoscenti. Despite the largely uncritical acceptance the idea received a few years ago, research shows that for artists the “long tail” is the “wrong tale”. But it may […]
Lee Hollaar is a professor of computer science at the University of Utah, where he teaches engineering and intellectual property law as well as networking and operating systems. On June 8, 2005, the Patent Reform Act of 2005 was introduced in the United States House of Representatives, to whatever fanfare accompanies patent legislation. Its primary […]
Ashlee Froese is an Osgoode Hall alumnus and currently practices intellectual property at the law firm of Keyser Mason Ball LLP. What are Geographical Indications in Canada? Geographical Indications (“GIs”) are protected indicia that specifically relate to wines and spirits under the Canadian Trade-marks Act (“the Act”). A GI identifies the “quality, reputation or other […]
Pascale Chapdelaine is a Ph.D. candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School and a member of IP Osgoode. Pascale’s thesis focuses on the interaction between consumer law and copyright law. What is the consumer entitled to do with musical recordings for her own personal use? Asking this question may appear to some, including consumers, as looking […]
In this blog, I examine the ambit of protection given to personality rights in Canadian law. I focus, in particular, on the common law tort of appropriation of personality. The tort was first articulated by the Ontario Court of Appeal in Krouse v. Chrysler Canada Ltd., (1973), 1 O.R. (2d) 225 (Ont. C.A.) It allows […]
Afroditi Theodoridou is a PhD student at Osgoode Hall Law School. On April 16, 2009, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision in favour of iParadigms who operates the “Turnitin Plagiarism Detection Service”. This online system evaluates the originality of submitted written assignments by comparing them with […]
Justin Lim is a student at Osgoode Hall Law School (J.D. Class of 2010) and Student Director of the International Legal Partnership I’m very excited to announce the collaboration between IP Osgoode and the International Legal Partnership (ILP) that will see the placement of Research Fellows with the People’s Patent Group (PPG) in Delhi, India. From […]