Giuseppina D’Agostino is the Founder and Director of IP Osgoode, the IP Intensive Program, and the IP Osgoode Innovation Clinic, the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the IPilogue, the Deputy Editor of the Intellectual Property Journal, and an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. 2014 was another exciting year in intellectual property (IP) law. […]
University fair use policies were dealt a blow in October when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit reversed the District Court ruling in Cambridge Press v Georgia State University (GSU).
IP Osgoode would like to thank everyone who attended Professor Jane Ginsburg's lecture, titled “The U.S. Supreme Court's Aereo decision and the U.S.' international obligation to implement the 'making available right': Are we there yet?,” on October 6, 2014 at Osgoode Hall Law School. The video of the lecture is available here. You can read Professor Ginsburg's […]
The recently announced decision of the United States District Court in Manhattan, UMG v. Escape Media Group (Grooveshark), serves to further elucidate the terms on which service providers can expect legal protection if their users are found to be uploading infringing content. More importantly, it gives us an excellent example of the differences between the US […]
On 19 August 2014, Register of Copyrights Maria A. Pallante released a draft of the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices, Third Edition. This publication is a 1,200 page document that in many parts reads as a treatise on U.S. copyright law. Its size alone speaks to the complexity of identifying and protecting copyright and […]
With echoes of the blockbuster Apple v Samsung case (see past IPilogue coverage here, here and here), The United States International Trade Commission (ITC) announced on Oct 6th that it will move ahead with a section 337 investigation into patent infringement claims made against Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd by NVIDIA Corp. The plaintiff alleges infringement of seven of its patents. This claim could potentially […]
Earlier this month, Twitter filed a lawsuit (Twitter v. Holder) against the US Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), claiming they prevented Twitter from publishing statistics pertaining to the number and type of US Government surveillance requests received. Twitter asserts that the publication ban is an unconstitutional violation of their […]
With the rising popularity of video and computer games, a new form of user generated content ("UGC") and a whole new set of intellectual property issues is emerging. Science fiction web series such as Red vs. Blue use copyrighted graphics and characters from the popular Xbox video game Halo to create new comedic content parodying first person shooter […]
The “making available” right, as articulated in the WIPO Copyright Treaty art. 8 (and the WPPT arts. 10 and 14), applies to the offering to the public of on-demand access to a work in the form of a stream or of a download. The “umbrella solution” adopted at the 1996 Diplomatic Conference that yielded the […]
A landmark ruling on Friday August 8, 2014 determined that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (the “NCAA”) can no longer stop its athletes from selling the rights to their own names, likenesses, and images. As such, major college student-athletes in men’s football and basketball could walk away from their locker rooms with gym bags full of […]