Last week, the big news in the video game blogosphere was the reported sale of the world's largest video game collection, comprising over 11,000 games, for more than $750,000 at auction. While the most salient fact of this story may be the magnitude of both the collection and the winning bid, the large numbers obscure a […]
For the first time in some twenty years, Canada’s copyright law framework is set for the foreseeable future. Previous attempts (in 2005, 2008, and 2010) to update the country’s copyright legislation for contemporary realities were stalled or aborted due to the problematics of successive minority governments during the mid-2000s. After attaining a parliamentary majority in 2011, the […]
Trade-mark law in Canada is poised for transmutation thanks to the 2014 Federal Budget of all things.
This past March, Toronto hosted the 55th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association (ISA). This year’s ISA Annual Convention brought together over 5300 scholars, practitioners, and students to discuss “Geopolitics in an Era of Globalization”. As intellectual property-based industries become increasingly implicated in global economic, social, cultural, and political discussions, copyright issues are becoming more […]
The Federal Court granted an order compelling an internet service provider (ISP) to divulge the names and addresses of some 2000 account holders implicated in alleged copyright infringement over peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. This type of order is often associated with “copyright trolls” in other jurisdictions. However, in granting the order, Prothonotary Kevin Aalto attached conditions […]
The re-posting of this analysis is part of a cross-posting collaboration with MediaLaws: Law and Policy of the Media in a Comparative Perspective.
Last August, China's State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) invalidated the core patent for Gilead Sciences' flagship drug Viread (as was reported by IPR Daily and a number of other news sources). This landmark ruling comes on the heels of recent changes to China's compulsory licensing scheme for pharmaceutical products. This quick-step of legislative reform followed by the […]
In July 2013, the Hong Kong government conducted a public consultation on the treatment of parody under the copyright regime. Building on two earlier consultations on digital copyright reform in December 2006 and April 2008, this latest consultation identified three legislative options: (1) clarifying the threshold for criminal copyright infringement; (2) introducing a specific criminal […]
Daniel Whalen won Canada's IP Writing Challenge last year for his article, "Everything Old is New Again: Reframing the Cultural Explanation for Intellectual Property Infringement in China." In anticipation for the next edition of Canada's IP Writing Challenge, we would like to share the introduction to Daniel's award-winning submission. Please enjoy and watch out next week […]
It has been nearly twenty years since the Uruguay Round of World Trade Organization (WTO) trade talks that created the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. In the intervening decades, multilateral trade negotiations have stalled and international agreements relating to intellectual property (IP) law have trended towards bi- and plurilateral levels. And, […]