An American photographer has been making headlines after receiving a massive award for copyright infringement by a health supplement website in relation to two of his photographs. It took 5 years, but on October 11, 2013 Andrew Paul Leonard was awarded $1.6 million in damages to be paid by Stemtech Health Sciences and its distributor.
The government of Antigua and Barbuda has recently published a press release detailing their plans on establishing a statutory body to oversee the monetization and exploitation of the suspension of American intellectual property rights. The World Trade Organization (WTO) authorized the suspension of US IP rights in the small twin-island nation earlier this year. The organization overseeing these developments, the WTO Remedies Implementation Committee, is in the […]
Most members of the public might be surprised to hear that “Happy Birthday to You” is apparently still subject to copyright protection in the United States, let alone that it is the subject of litigation aptly described by the New York Times as a “lawsuit for the ages.”
Popular online game developer Zynga was recently the subject of a trade-mark infringement claim over their game “Scramble With Friends.” In the England and Wales High Court case, J.W. Spear & Sons Ltd Mattel, Inc & Anor v Zynga, Mattel claimed that the Zynga game infringed their SCRABBLE and SCRAMBLE family of marks.
A key feature of any patent system is the right of enforcement available for infringement. Of the various recourses available in Canada, damages are the default remedy. Care is therefore necessary to ensure the correct level of damages is awarded, if only because undeservedly large or small damages awards may hurt innovation by depleting the […]
Rules define sport. In boxing, a fighter who is knocked down has a ten-second count to stand up and continue the match. If they fail, they are declared “knocked out” and their opponent wins. Rules also define law - except that in the world of law, the fighter can be declared “knocked out” before they […]
There is a little-known place in the world where you can approach absolutely anyone—a Brazilian federal minister or WIPO legal officer; a policy manager at Google or the world's leading cybersecurity expert; an Indonesian LGBT activist or Pakistani digital rights advocate; or someone at some intersection of civil society, government, business, academia, law, technology, or […]
Mark Twain once said that "facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable." Now, many believe that the London School of Economics applied their statistics a tad too flexibly this fall when its Media Policy Project Series Editors released a brief advocating that the United Kingdom not implement its expected Digital Economy Act 2010 (DEA).
In the time that it takes you to read this paragraph Google will have removed eight sites from its search engine indexes. Sorry, make that forty.
The Ontario Government's new electronic health records bill has passed its second reading. The Electronic Personal Health Information Protection Act (Bill 78, EPHIPA or EHR Act), is a responsive and important - yet still wanting - update to Ontario's 2004 electronic health records legislation.