Brian Chau is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. "Intellectual Property is the oil of the 21st century. Look at the richest men a hundred years ago: they all made their money extracting natural resources or moving them around. All today's richest men have made their money out of intellectual property" - Mark […]
Billy Barnes is a JD candidate at the University of Toronto. In a much publicized move, Amazon remotely deleted two books from users' Kindle e-book readers. It causes one to wonder what rights we actually have in our digital possessions in this increasingly connected world. As you quickly learn when you start studying IP law, property […]
Peter Waldkirch is a second year LL.B. student at the University of Ottawa. Jack Kirby (1917-1994) is well-known to comic book fans as one of the most influential artists and authors in the history of the industry, particularly noted for his groundbreaking work with Marvel Comics during the 1960s. Kirby had a hand in the […]
Brian Chau is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. Where do we draw the line between commercial and non-commercial uses? Is this view the same across content creators and users? A quick background Creative commons licences are designed to help content creators (who own the copyright) communicate to their users which rights they […]
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 […]
Open core licensing, also known as commercial extensions, is a licensing regime that offers core components for free, but charges licensees for additional premium products. The approach is a twist on the dual licensing approach where the vendor, as copyright holder, makes the source code freely available, but also offers the same code under a […]
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 […]
Michael Jackson's death has the surviving members of the Beatles in knots. Not only because they just lost a fellow musician and entertainment icon, but also because Jackson's untimely death has left his estate mired in legal complexities regarding the future ownership of the publishing rights of the Beatles' catalogue. As co-owner of Sony/ATV Music […]
Creative Commons ("CC") is a non-profit corporation "dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright." CC provides free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, […]
My first experience with intellectual property occurred several years ago when I watched a documentary on the patents on the genes BRCA1 and 2. Individuals with certain types of mutations within these genetic sequences are at a significantly higher risk for developing hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. Despite knowing little about both genetics and law at the […]