Although a patent is typically seen as a right to exclude others, the willingness of American courts to automatically provide that right through a permanent or preliminary injunction has been affected by the Supreme Court of the United States in Ebay v. MercExchange (547 U.S. 388 (2006)). In a recent article, Prof. Richard Epstein argues […]
ViVien Hoang is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall and is taking the Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property course. Aubry v. Editions Vice-Versa, [1998] 1 S.C.R. 591 altered the legal landscape in which photographers were operating in Quebec. Aubry distinguishes Canadian public photography laws from American ones; the contrast is evident when […]
Kevin Osborne is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall and is taking the Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property course When you give your email address to a website, do you expect that site to offer it to anyone who asks for it? How much privacy do you expect? A recent case heard […]
James Gannon is an Osgoode Hall alumnus and is currently an articling student at McCarthy Tétrault. Much attention has recently been paid to proposed legislation that would require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to step up their efforts to prevent subscribers from downloading copyright-protected content through the Internet connections they provide. These initiatives are often described […]
Susan Corbett is a Senior Lecturer in Commercial Law, Victoria University of Wellington In response to a barrage of criticism, unprecedented in response to a topic as alien to the average kiwi as copyright law, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has announced that section 92A of the Copyright Act 1994 will not come into force […]
In a recent opinion piece at wired.com, Bruce Schneier criticizes the “expectation of privacy” test that is used to interpret the fourth amendment of the United States. He notes that this test is dangerous, because “the whole ‘expectations’ test is circular — what the government does affects what the government can do”. The American constitution […]
Recent cases in the U.S. have spotlighted the growing concern over the ease with which technology can be improperly used by jurors and the impact this has on the fairness of trials. Specifically, the use of cell phones and PDA’s to disseminate confidential information, and even the use of search engines and online databases to […]
As a part of my undergraduate studies, I took a course in business strategy, and one of the most memorable topics was technological lock-in. We were taught that there is explicit value in being a technological first-mover because such businesses can create switching costs for purchasers by establishing a proprietary standard in a new market. […]
A recent blog has commented on copyright reforms proposed at the Leadership Music Digital Summit. In particular, panelists at the seminar had suggested that copyright registration should become mandatory for those seeking copyright protection. At the Summit, registration was seen as a solution to many ‘copyright ills’ including the problems of ‘orphan works’. An orphan work is […]
Professor Giuseppina D’Agostino is the Founder and Director IP Osgoode. Michel Gérin is the Executive Director of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada. When you look around the globe one cannot help but realize that Canadian writing in IP has much work ahead. For starters, we need much more of it, on all areas of IP, from […]