The U.S. Copyright Office is currently in the process of conducting its 6th triennial rulemaking review under 17 U.S.C. § 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). This section allows the Copyright Office to create exemptions to the DMCA’s prohibition against bypassing technological measures that control access to copyright protected works. In each rulemaking proceeding […]
The US Copyright Office has published a report that, at the very least, promises to reopen the debate surrounding rights of remuneration for performers and makers of sound recordings. This followed huge publicity generated in the United States about artist remuneration rates for webcasting, which in turn was sparked by pop pixie Taylor Swift’s pronouncement that her […]
Canadian science fiction writer, journalist, and blogger Cory Doctorow has published a new book on Copyright and Digital Rights Management (DRM) reform Information Doesn't Want to Be Free. The book approaches these subjects from a content creator's perspective, and is a succinct and thoughtful piece that explores the challenges of Copyright and the use of Digital Rights […]
Giuseppina D’Agostino is the Founder and Director of IP Osgoode, the IP Intensive Program, and the IP Osgoode Innovation Clinic, the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the IPilogue, the Deputy Editor of the Intellectual Property Journal, and an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. 2014 was another exciting year in intellectual property (IP) law. […]
On October 23rd and 24th, inventors, law students, lawyers, patent agents, patent portfolio managers, policy analysts, Canadian Intellectual Property Office’s (CIPO) patent examiners and other stakeholders of the patent system convened at Osgoode for the IP Hackathon. Inspired by similar events at Stanford, Professor Giuseppina D’Agostino, the Founder and Director of IP Osgoode, decided to […]
Professor Giuseppina D’Agostino, Founder and Director of the Intellectual Property Law & Technology Group (IP Osgoode) at Osgoode Hall Law School, stirred up the IP community yet again with her innovative and invigorating way of “tearing apart the patent system.”
Earlier this month, Twitter filed a lawsuit (Twitter v. Holder) against the US Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), claiming they prevented Twitter from publishing statistics pertaining to the number and type of US Government surveillance requests received. Twitter asserts that the publication ban is an unconstitutional violation of their […]
On September 4, the Supreme Court of Canada granted leave to appeal from the Federal Court of Appeal in CBC v SODRAC 2003 Inc which considered the issue of whether broadcasters must pay royalties on ephemeral or incidental copies of an audiovisual work created during the preparation of that work for broadcast. The case arose out […]
In Parts I and II of this series of blog posts, I discussed the ongoing digital copyright reform in Hong Kong. Specifically, I called for the transplant of the Canadian UGC exception to the jurisdiction, as part of an effort to enlarge the creative, political, social and cultural space of individual internet users.Since the last blog post, the Hong […]
It’s often hard to recognize the evolving nature of legal regimes amidst the fast-paced and so-called revolutionary social and technological changes facilitated by digital and networked technologies. Laws, norms, and conventions developed over centuries are being problematized and rethought as new social, technological, and economic realities emerge. Computer software, a technology that’s mainstream adoption is […]