Gospel, Gold Diggers, and Gum Trees: How Sampling Litigation Changes the Tune

Ren Bucholz is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall and is taking the Intellectual Property Theory course. Copyright holders, like musicians, have a knack for riffing on ideas from the past.  Consider the many variations of the copyright infringement lawsuit.  Every year brings more examples of a rights-holder who hears some element of their song, […]

Bill C-61 and DRM: How the Canadian Constitution ensures a balance of copyrights

Virgil Cojocaru is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. Professor Emir Aly Crowne-Mohammed and Yonatan Rozenszajn argue in their article, DRM Roll Please: Is Digital Rights Management Legislation Unconstitutional in Canada? that the Digital Rights Management (DRM) Provisions in Bill C-61 are ultra vires (Latin for "beyond the powers") of Parliament’s power under […]

Should Copyright Law Rethink Authorship?

Daniel Kennedy is a JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall and is taking the Intellectual Property Theory course. Like many words, “authorship” takes on distinct meaning in the realm of copyright law.  However, it may be difficult to divorce historical values associated with the term even when it is used in the legal realm.  In his article, “Copyright and […]

Wikipedia: Advancing the public interest, or stealing copyrighted photographs?

The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in the United Kingdom holds the most extensive collection of portraits in the world. Over the past five years, the gallery has been working on its £1 million project of digitising its entire collection for viewing online. In addition to the low resolution images of the complete works, the NPG […]

Pirate Party Not All Wrong

A few months ago I got an email from Blogger.com regarding a blog I run in my spare time. It read: “Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog infringes upon the copyrights of others.” Blogger had taken down a post that […]

The Need for Weak IP Protection in the U.S. Fashion Industry

Despite the fact the enforcement of intellectual property rights in the United States fashion design industry, relative to other innovative sectors such as computing, music, television and film, may seem non-existent, fashion accounts for $200 billion in sales annually in the U.S.  Two prominent legal scholars, Kal Raustiala and Christopher Springman, have written a series […]

The Emerging Recognition of the Importance of Design and Creative Practice in Product/Service Innovation: Moving Away from a Strict Adherence to Technology and the ‘Hard’ Sciences

In his April 2008 report, ‘Between a Hard Rock and a Soft Space: Design, Creative Practice and Innovation’, Dr. John H. Howard discusses how the arts, humanities and social sciences can contribute to innovation systems and innovation policy by recognizing that design and creative practice play a central role in innovation. He argues that, while […]

The findings of the High Court in IceTV v Nine Network Australia: A New Age of Copyright in Australia?

Catherine Bond is a PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales, Australia. IceTV Pty Limited v Nine Network Australia Pty Limited [2009] HCA 14 In mid-2008, when the High Court of Australia granted special leave to appeal in the copyright case IceTV Pty Ltd v Nine Network Australia Pty Ltd, […]

AP’s heated campaign over ‘Hot News’

A recent pronouncement by Associated Press (AP) to adopt a more aggressive effort to “fend off copycat competition and “misappropriation” in the dwindling market for timely reporting,” has stirred the online news-outlet community and its players. In his capacity as the CEO of MediaNews Group Inc., and the Chairman of Associated Press board of directors, […]

Locating the Public Domain

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. & […]