On June 12th, 2013, the Chairperson of the CRTC – Jean-Pierre Blais – addressed a gathered group of context creators and advertisers at the Banff World Media Festival in Alberta. In his speech, Blais laid out the current role of the organization and how he sees it evolving in the future.
The dividing line between intellectual property and antitrust laws was further clarified last week when the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) settled a debate on the illegality of Reverse Payment Agreements (RPAs) in Federal Trade Commission (FTC) v Actavis. In so doing, the Court split the difference between the FTC’s assertion that RPAs […]
The Federal Government recently announced it would not allow Mobilicity to transfer the wireless spectrum it owns to Telus, effectively blocking a deal for the incumbent to acquire the smaller new entrant. Many see this as a victory for consumers and a bolstering of the Government’s initiative to spur competition in the wireless market, while others are concerned about the immediate future of […]
Watch out, patent trolls – the Attorney General of Vermont is coming to get you. Vermont recently became the first US state to enact an anti-“patent trolling” law.
Last month, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) denied leave to appeal in the case Eli Lilly Canada Inc v Novopharm Ltd, passing on an opportunity to clarify the controversial “promise of the patent” utility requirement for Canadian pharmaceutical patents.
The European Commission has proposed amendments to the Community Trade Mark (CTM) Regulation and Trade Marks Directive. The primary function is to harmonize EU member trade-mark laws. This bureaucratic hygiene aim – which resulted in a mixture of trade-mark rights expansion and contraction – stands in contrast to the current, controversial and (in my opinion) […]
TorrentFreak has reported that the first episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones season three broke historic download records, with more than a million as of April 1st, 2013. Canada ranked fourth internationally in terms of the highest number of TorrentFreak S3E1 downloads, representing 7.4% of total downloads at the time of reporting.
Bill C-56, a new and inevitably controversial piece of proposed legislation, was introduced on March 1, 2013. With the short title, Combating Counterfeit Products Act, the message seems simple, but contained within it are extensive proposals to change both the Copyright Act and the Trade-marks Act in Canada.
With markets in real property, personal property, and intellectual property quite cornered, the future-savvy lawyer might consider their cutting-edge cousin, if France’s data-mining tax proposal has its way: what could be termed existential property*, courtesy of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and the like. Or rather, courtesy of their users, whose digitally collected personal data may be wholesale […]
The long battle in the American courts over Myriad Genetics’ patents of BRCA1 and BRCA2, the primary diagnostic genes for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer has been well-documented in the IPilogue (see coverage by Beatrice yesterday as well as previous posts here, here, and here). Now, Myriad is poised to defend their patents at the Supreme Court for a second time, with […]