WIPO
The Future of Copyright in a Global Context
This past March, Toronto hosted the 55th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association (ISA). This year’s ISA Annual Convention brought together over 5300 scholars, practitioners, and students to discuss “Geopolitics in an Era of Globalization”. As intellectual property-based industries become increasingly implicated in global economic, social, cultural, and political discussions, copyright issues are becoming more […]
World Intellectual Property Day 2014
Happy World IP Day! Wow, how many times have you said something like that before? World Intellectual Property Day? Yes, IP has come a long way. Since 2000, member states (currently 187 member states) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) designated April 26 (even when it falls on a Saturday like this year) as World […]
Transplanting the Canadian UGC Exception to Hong Kong: Part 2
In Part I of this series of blog posts, I discussed a position paper I submitted to the Hong Kong government as part of its public consultation on the treatment of parody under the copyright regime. This post continues from where the previous post left off. It discusses a forthcoming article I contributed to the Symposium on User-Generated Content under Canadian Copyright Law, which […]
Beer, Reform, and Policy: A Pint of Chinese Trade-mark Law
If you want to order a Heineken in China, just ask the bartender for a “喜力啤酒” (pronounced “see lee pee jow”). The second word-pair, “啤酒”(“pee jow”), simply means “beer” and can be ubiquitously used to order beer in China. But the first word-pair, “喜力” (“see lee”), is the trade name chosen by Heineken to represent […]
When the Internet Has a Party, Everyone’s Invited: IP Law Issues at the Internet Governance Forum 2013
There is a little-known place in the world where you can approach absolutely anyone—a Brazilian federal minister or WIPO legal officer; a policy manager at Google or the world’s leading cybersecurity expert; an Indonesian LGBT activist or Pakistani digital rights advocate; or someone at some intersection of civil society, government, business, academia, law, technology, or […]
International Aspects of the New User-Generated Content Exception in the Copyright Act
On October 10, Osgoode Hall Law School hosted a symposium on User Generated Content under Canadian Copyright Law. The final panel of the day featured IP Osgoode Advisory Board member Barry Sookman and Prof. Joost Blom, who each gave a talk on the broader international context of the UGC exception created by recent amendments to […]
Canadians Make Their Mark on Global Guide for Museum IP
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has updated its Guide on Managing Intellectual Property for Museums, with two Canadians playing major roles in the Guide’s creation.
Canadian Objection to proposed .mls domain .rejected
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has rejected the Legal Rights Objection (LRO) of the Canadian Real Estate Association of Ottawa to the registration of the generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) .mls by Afilias Limited. While the WIPO Panel acknowledged that while the Association possesses a valid legal right to the term “MLS”, they found it was […]