Gambling has accompanied sports-watching for hundreds of years. In Canada alone, it was reportedly estimated that $500 million are spent annually on provincially-regulated sports gambling. Similar gambling activities are now prevalent in digital arenas. Popular strategy video games, such as Starcraft and Dota 2, have given rise to the massive industry of eSports, or professional competitive […]
On June 23 the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) delivered its decision in Douez v Facebook Inc., ruling in favour of the plaintiff. This decision affirms that the privacy rights of Canadians override forum selection clauses contained in contracts of adhesion, which are becoming increasingly prevalent in places such as online service agreements.
Innovation is, once again, a topic of great concern for Canadian policy makers and the commentariat. And for good reason. Yet, at a time when (mainly foreign) companies – notably Alphabet (Google), Apple, Tesla, Amazon, and Facebook – are lauded as being the ‘world’s most innovative’ (for example, see FastCompany and the Boston Consulting Group) […]
Earlier this month, I attended the 2017 Canadian Telecom Summit and covered the Regulatory Blockbuster panel. The Regulatory Blockbuster is an annual event where regulatory representatives from telecom companies (this year, TELUS, Rogers, Bell, and TekSavvy) and other representative stakeholders (this year featured the Public Interest Advocacy Centre) debate regulation, pricing, and future challenges to […]
If we are going to be fair, the cryptocurrency idea dates back to almost forty years ago. In an article published in the Wall Street Journal on August 19, 1977, Friedrich Hayek — the economist and philosopher whose work on a theory of money earned him a Nobel Prize — anticipated that many different types […]
Despite persistent fears of a surveillance state and artificial intelligence, the smart device market continues to expand with little chance of collapse. Accordingly, some of the sessions at the 2017 Canadian Telecom Summit (CTS17) focussed on how the telecommunications industry players in Canada are adapting to the rapid evolution of interconnected devices and an increasing […]
The rapid growth of big data technologies and Internet of Things (IoT) devices mandates the modernization of the Canadian privacy legislation, which establishes protection from both private companies and government agencies. The necessity of the upcoming reforms to the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and the Privacy Act was illustrated during […]
The International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP) will be holding its annual workshop in Toronto, July 12th-14th, 2017. Organized by the Centre for Innovation law and Policy at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law, and co-sponsored in part by Osgoode Hall Law School and IP Osgoode, the workshop will […]
Our warmest congratulations to the Honourable Marshall Rothstein, CC, QC, who has been appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada in the honours list issued from Rideau Hall today.
IP Osgoode would like to congratulate the winners of the Gowling WLG Best Blog in IP Law and Technology Prize for 2016-2017. Four prizes in total are awarded each year to Osgoode students and the winning blog posts are featured in the IPilogue. Recipients also receive a $500 award, are announced at Convocation and receive […]