Ivy Tsui is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School The U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) filed an amicus brief to support the ACLU and the PUBPAT in a lawsuit challenging Myriad Genetics’ patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Previously on IPilogue, Dan Whalen covered some of the social policy issues raised by gene patents. In this post, I will discuss […]
Stuart Freen is a J.D. candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. The Competition Bureau of Canada is asking the Superior Court of Ontario to order Rogers Communications to pay a $10M penalty for misleading advertising in the mobile phone market. The allegations relate to advertisements for the Rogers discount brand Chatr claiming the service had […]
Dan Whalen is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School Digital-age Beatlemaniacs were feeling fine when Apple Inc. recently announced that its iTunes Store would finally have the band’s catalogue available for purchase. Though widely lamented, the delay has not generally been questioned in light of other industry grievances with iTunes, such as ubiquitous […]
Matt Lonsdale is a JD candidate at Dalhousie University In June of 2010, the UK’s Digital Economy Act came into force. The Act “includes provisions relating to the UK’s communications infrastructure, public service broadcasting, copyright licensing and online infringement of copyright, and security and safety online and in video games”. The Act was controversial from […]
David Vaver is Professor of Intellectual Property Law at Osgoode Hall Law School, former Reuters Professor of Intellectual Property & Information Technology Law, University of Oxford and former Director of the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre One among many contentious issues raised by the proposed copyright reforms in the Copyright Modernization Bill of 2010, Bill […]
A major source of controversy in Canadian patent law is the treatment of business method patents. Up until recently business methods were not considered to be patentable (see the Patent Commissioner’s decision in Amazon.com and U-Haul). However, much has changed after the Federal Court’s decision in the Amazon.com case.
Dr. Ron Bouchard is an Associate Professor in the Faculties of Law and Medicine at the University of Manitoba. I am pleased to announce a new collaborative consortium of eleven intellectual property law and health policy scholars, economists, and practicing lawyers in nine countries. The group is called the Consortium Study of Global Pharmaceutical Linkage […]
Leslie Chong is a J.D. Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School When Jose Ojeda Vidal penned the note “Estamos bien en el refugio los 33” (“We are okay in the refuge, the 33 of us”), it is unlikely that he could have imagined the furor that those seven words written in red ink on a […]
Matt Lonsdale is a JD candidate at Dalhousie University The New York Times is predicting that this holiday season could be the time that electronic book readers, or e-readers, finally break into the mainstream. As consumers become accustomed to the idea and retailers drop prices, more people may choose to skip over old-fashioned paper and […]
Dan Whalen is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School At a meeting held in Brussels last week, EU delegates came no closer to reaching consensus on a unified European patent system. After years of proposals, the monumental task formally began last year after EU members agreed to create a single European patent and a […]