The extremely variable pricing of diamonds has made them a historically difficult and unstable commodity to trade. However, recent advents in diamond technology have been patented, and industry insiders such as Martin Rapaport have suggested that diamonds will become akin to gold from an economic standpoint.
New legal research from the University of Pennsylvania Law School suggests so. The aim of the study, according to Professors David S. Abrams and R. Polk Wagner, is to empirically predict how the recent changes to American patent laws, introduced by section 3 (s3) of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA), will affect American innovation after […]
On Thursday July 12, 2012, the Supreme Court of Canada rendered it’s judgements in five major copyright cases. These judgements will shape Canada’s copyright law for many years to come.
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. has survived a challenge against its “Display Device” patent by DSM IP Assets B.V. in a ruling by the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO) that tries to clarify the law around public disclosure of a patent and the use of email.
The much anticipated Supreme Court of Canada ruling in Rogers Communications Inc v Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada, 2012 SCC 35 (Rogers v SOCAN), culminated with a unanimous Court holding that on-demand transmissions of music streams made available by online music services constitute communications “to the public”. Consequently, the on-demand streaming of […]
The United States Court of Appeals has handed down a ruling that tries to clarify the overlap of First Amendment protected artistic expression and unregistered and registered trade-marks.
On May 31, the Copyright Board of Canada certified a new tariff on the use of recorded music played at events such as weddings, karaoke, and conventions. The tariff will be paid to collective Re:Sound, which represents the rights of artists and music labels.
The history of the “Havana Club” brand rum is a long one. It was originally produced and sold by the Arechabala family until 1960, when the Castro government confiscated their holdings without compensation. Since this included the Arechabala’s rights to sell their rum, the Cuban government began selling the rum themselves under the stolen “Havana […]
When suspected Montreal “body parts” killer, Luka Magnotta, was detained in Berlin on June 4 following an international manhunt, only one small piece of a complex legal web was resolved. In addition to the ongoing murder investigation, digital issues involving web hosting of explicit content and concerns about trademark denigration have been thrust to the […]
In November 2011, the Advocate-General of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), Yves Bot, issued an influential but non-binding legal opinion, positing that the functional aspects of computer programs should not be protected under copyright law. To do so would be against the interests of fair dealing, by preventing decompilation and reverse engineering, among other […]