Kate Lacey is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall taking the “Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property” course. As part of their settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, Google has developed the Books Rights Registry, an apparently independent, non-profit entity designed to collect revenue from Google Book Search […]
Over an eleven day period ending last Wednesday, three lay judges and one professional judge presided over the most closely followed and polarized trials in recent Swedish history. In their hands lies the fate of the Pirate Bay – the ever-popular BitTorrent website. With the court’s judgment due in April, file-sharers and copyright holders all […]
Stuart Freen is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall and is taking the Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property course On Tuesday, the RAND Corporation released their latest report “Film Piracy, Organized Crime, and Terrorism”. The report was authored by the independent non-profit think-tank RAND but was funded by a grant from the Motion […]
Recently Shepard Fairey, the creator of the famous Obama poster, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. against the Associated Press [AP]. Fairey is asking the federal court to declare that his poster did not infringe the copyright of AP’s photograph. AP claimed ownership of the image appearing on the poster. The image closely resembles a photograph taken […]
A few weeks ago, the Honourable Paul Michel sat down for an interview with Professor Doug Lichtman from UCLA School of Law. Judge Michel is the current Chief Circuit Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and in that capacity he has much experience dealing with patent litigation cases. Much […]
In a recent U.S. patent dispute between two information technology players, a court has ruled that a patentee’s destruction of potentially relevant evidence may be sanctioned by a declaration of patent unenforceability. The ruling in Micron Technology, Inc. v. Rambus, Inc. (Civ. No. 00-792-SLR, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1260 (D.Del., Jan. 9, 2009)) penalizes Rambus, a […]
On Thursday, December 11, as part of the IP Osgoode Speaks series, Jason J. Kee, the Director of Policy & Legal Affairs for the Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESAC) gave a talk on intellectual property issues in the computer and video gaming industry. The event, held downtown Toronto at Ogilvy Renault’s office, provided lawyers […]
On December 4, the renowned guitarist Joe Satriani filed a copyright lawsuit against the British rock group Coldplay. Satriani argued that a substantial part of his original instrumental piece, ‘If I could Fly’, was reproduced in the band’s hit, ‘Viva La Vida’. Coldplay faced a similar allegation earlier this year. The young Brooklyn band, Creaky […]
As we move forward into a world of greater complexity filled with rapidly developing inventions and innovations, product owners and manufacturers are modifying their supply-chain models to complement the changing global economy. This post will discuss how both the high-tech and intangible intellectual works sectors are re-thinking their distribution models and suggest how these changes […]
In George Nathanael’s post titled “Protecting Graffiti Artists”, he proposed that withholding copyright protection for graffiti is the best response to the question of whether creators of graffiti should be protected the same way as other artists who create murals on their own property. The dilemma of rewarding someone who created a work of art in […]