Nirav Bhatt is an LLM candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. The test for determining the validity of design patents should be the “ordinary observer test” and not the “point of novelty”. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal circuit (CAFC) in the recent case of International Seaway Trading Corp. v. Walgreens Corporation ruled that […]
2009 was a significant year for developments in the area of intellectual property and technology. We have put together a brief list of noteworthy news, events and cases that we have covered this past year. Many of these items received top mainstream news coverage and were closely watched by the Canadian public. We are also […]
Alex Gloor is a JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. The debate over the patentability of computer software has been well-documented, and there seems to be no end in sight. Supporters of software patents defend the right by using many of the historical rationales for patents, such as disclosure of the invention, stimulation of […]
Nirav Bhatt is an LLM candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. In what could be seen as a strange or rather surprising move, a distinguished group of academicians, the majority of which are based at the University of Manchester, have issued something called the Manchester Manifesto. The Manifesto Group brings together international experts from relevant disciplines […]
Alex Gloor is a JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School A recent decision regarding a UK patent application by Ranger Services Ltd raised an interesting issue regarding the accessibility of online documents for prior art searches. As was first discussed on the IPKat blog, the specific question for discussion is the appropriate standard of […]
George Nathanael is a JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. Earlier this month a United States District Court denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought forth against the USPTO, Myriad Genetics, and directors of the University of Utah Research Foundation. The suit had to do with patents covering the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 […]
Michael John Long is an LLM candidate at Osgoode Hall and is taking the Intellectual Property Theory course. The Romance of the Public Domain, as Anupam Chander and Madhavi Sunder see it, is the presumption that the public domain is a landscape where everyone has equal access to reap the riches found therein. This ‘romance […]
Alex Gloor is a JD Student at Osgoode Hall Law School The next step in the well documented Bilski case took place on Nov. 9 when the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments from both parties. As a quick reminder, the issue revolves around the patenting of business methods; in this case, the subject […]
Nathan Fan is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. When Toronto-based i4i Inc. suspected their software patent had been infringed by Microsoft Corp., they rallied their resources and launched a lawsuit against the software giant in March 2007. i4i’s patent was granted in 1998 for their XML software which allowed users to manage large amounts […]
Nirav Bhatt is an LLM Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. From 2-6 November 2009, the meeting of the Ad Hoc Working Group for the ongoing negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol to enhance international climate change cooperation took place in Barcelona, Spain. The Barcelona talks […]