It is often said that imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but in the world of copyright, flattery is a much more controversial act. If you are not already familiar with the Shepard Fairey v. The Associated Press controversy, hop over to this site and take a look at the two pictures. The original […]
Stephen Sharon is a recent graduate of Touro Law School in New York where he focused on intellectual property. Stephen was also the first place winner of the Nathan Burkan Memorial Competition sponsored by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) for his submission of a case study about the legal battle between […]
s. 29.1 of Canada's Copyright Act provides that fair dealing for the purpose of criticism does not infringe copyright if the source is mentioned. The main issue then is whether parody - the use of humor or ridicule to point out some particular feature of the original work - is an acceptable form of criticism as per […]
Pascale Chapdelaine is a Ph.D. candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School and a member of IP Osgoode. Pascale's thesis focuses on the interaction between consumer law and copyright law. What is the consumer entitled to do with musical recordings for her own personal use? Asking this question may appear to some, including consumers, as looking […]
Afroditi Theodoridou is a PhD student at Osgoode Hall Law School. On April 16, 2009, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's decision in favour of iParadigms who operates the "Turnitin Plagiarism Detection Service". This online system evaluates the originality of submitted written assignments by comparing them with […]
Sheldon Inkol is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall and is taking the Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property course. According to Julie E. Cohen, the public domain is nowhere. And all around us at the same time. In her article “Copyright, Commodification, and Culture: Locating the Public Domain” (in Guibault, L. & […]
Afroditi Theodoridou is a PhD student at Osgoode Hall Law School. At the 27th Annual Conference of the Visual Resources Association (VRA), the international organization of image media professionals, the opening plenary session entitled "Fair Use or Fair Dealing: Which Should Give You More Comfort?" was held at the Ontario College of Art & Design […]
Last Friday, IP Osgoode hosted a panel of copyright thinkers at Osgoode Entertainment and Sports Law Association's 11th Annual Entertainment and Sports Law Conference. The panel was entitled “Copyright in the Remix Era”, but if the panelists could agree upon one thing it was that this new era is actually a return to old principles. […]
As discussed by Anna in her post yesterday, fair dealing under Canadian law works as follows: a user is allowed a limited use of a copyrighted material without needing to get permission from the rights holder in specific circumstances; for the purpose of research or private study, criticism or review and for the purposes of news […]
There is a growing concern among media companies that news aggregation websites (NAWs) are taking large portions of original content, ‘shaving away potential readers and profiting from the content’ without properly compensating the media companies that provide the original content. According to the Canadian Copyright Act, such taking of original content is allowed as long as […]