Happy World IP Day! Wow, how many times have you said something like that before? World Intellectual Property Day? Yes, IP has come a long way. Since 2000, member states (currently 187 member states) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) designated April 26 (even when it falls on a Saturday like this year) as World […]
On Monday, March 31st, the United States Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments in the case of Alice Corporation Pty Ltd v CLS Bank International. Many hope that this ruling will help bring clarity to the patentability of software and business processes under US patent law.
Creating YouTube videos incorporating copyright protected works is a commonplace, often amateur pursuit of today's tech-savvy cultural 'consumers' and no one is making money off of it, right?... Wrong!
There is currently a live, ongoing legal dispute in California between former and current student athletes (SAs) and the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) which reveals that regulations defining collegiate eligibility did not foresee the nexus of new media technology and sport. Consequently, NCAA bylaws do not consider the effects of athlete intellectual property on […]
When I first read the Supreme Court of Canada's landmark decision in CCH Canadian Ltd v Law Society of Upper Canada concerning the concept of originality in copyright law, I thought something was amiss. According to the Copyright Act, copyright shall subsist in every original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic work; however, "original" is not […]
The course Legal Values: Commercializing Intellectual Property is being offered for the first time at Osgoode Hall Law School this winter term. The IPilogue sat down with Adjunct Professors, Ed Fan (Torys LLP, Partner) and Loreto Grimaldi (MedAvail Technologies Inc., COO & General Counsel) to talk about this unique course. As the business world increasingly relies on an […]
An Ontario Superior Court has rejected a class action settlement between the publisher Thomson Reuters and a collection of Canadian lawyers and law firms, stating that the proposed settlement is not “fair, reasonable, or in the best interests of the Class Members.” The proposed settlement would have seen Thomson Reuters fund a trust for public […]
Copyright ownership in Ellen Degeneres' famous Oscar Twitter Selfie, which holds the record for most retweets, might be unclear, but for the average citizen sharing the picture, it doesn’t matter much. Canada’s fair dealing and the United States’ fair use exemptions cover the most common types of sharing and dissemination of the image.
In the past, Monsanto has been successful in defending the company's patents concerning the genes and modified cells present in genetically modified (GM) plants in both the United States and in Canada. Are Monsanto's new products going to be a hot topic of debate? Likely yes, but maybe not for the reasons you would expect.
A quarter century since he helped to create it, the man widely regarded as the creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, has renewed calls for a Digital Bill of Rights to help preserve the open and innovative character of his invention and to protect human rights in the so-called digital age.