IP Osgoode coordinates and hosts a rich array of research, teaching, and professional events for students, scholars, and the IP community.
The IP Osgoode Speaks series invites leading scholars and professionals working in the field of IP law and technology to present their current projects, works-in-progress, and recent publications to the IP Osgoode community, in person and online.
Copyright, Openness, and Inequities: Licensing African Datasets
3 October 2024
Speaker: Dr. Chijioke Okorie, founder of the Data Science Law Lab and Assistant Professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She is an Africa correspondent at The IPKat blog, associate editor of South African Intellectual Property Law Journal, and the author of several articles on intellectual property and information justice issues in Africa.
Professor Okorie's presentation identified inequities in existing open licenses for African datasets and proposed guiding principles for an alternative approach.
Additional comments were offered by York University’s Professor Tesh Dagne, an IP Osgoode Affiliated Researcher and Ontario Research Chair in Governing AI.
A Zoom video of this hybrid event is available here.
The Dabus Story: Can an AI be an Inventor?
22 Nov 2023
Speakers: Professor Ryan Abbott, University of Surrey School of Law, is leading the international litigation to establish whether DABUS, an AI, can be designated as an inventor under IP law.
Professor Abbott was joined in this panel discussion by Professor and IP Osgoode Director Carys Craig, and leading Canadian lawyers Reshika Dhir and Paul Blizzard (Bereskinn & Parr LLP).
Discussants: Osgoode graduate students Divyaa Dhankar (who was also the organizer of the event), Luna Xiaolu Li and Shadi Nasseri.
A Zoom video of this hybrid event is available here.
Finding the Right Balance between Control and Access in a Developing Country Context—IP Law and Policy Making in Africa
12 Oct 2024
Speaker: Professor Tobias Schonwetter is the Director of the IP Unit and the iNtaka Centre for Law & Technology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He serves on the Open Science Advisory Board for South Africa’s Department of Science and Innovation and has led numerous development and innovation oriented research and capacity building projects, most notably the Open African Innovation Research network (Open AIR).
This presentation highlighted some of the key considerations for IP law and policymakers in Africa as they seek to modernize and contextualize colonial-era IP laws in the quest to promote innovation and development.
A Zoom recording of the session is available here.
Reframing Copyright’s Key Exclusive Rights in the Age of Access: Lessons from SOCAN v. ESA (SCC 2022)
13 Sept 2023
Dr. Cheryl Foong was a Visiting Scholar at Osgoode Hall Law School in fall 2023. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Business and Law at Curtin University in Australia, and an expert on copyright law and dissemination technologies. Her work was cited with approval by the Supreme Court of Canada in the ground-breaking case of ESA v. SOCAN 2022 SCC 30, which was the focus of her presentation.
Dr. Foong's parsed the reasoning of the Supreme Court of Canada, commending its efforts to avoid the overlap and duplication of copyright's exclusive rights while also querying the future role and relevance of the reproduction right.
A Zoom recording of this hybrid presentation is available here.
Balancing Freedom of Expression, Copyright, and Trademark Rights: Art of Science?
31 August 2022
Speaker: Dan Bereskin is a founding partner of Bereskin & Parr LLP and serves as a mediator and arbitrator for a variety of intellectual property disputes.
The scope of copyright and trademark rights has expanded judicially for decades. A direct consequence is court decisions that arguably impact adversely on freedom of expression guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In this lecture, Dan Bereskin discussed how a balance between these competing rights may be achieved, either judicially, by remedial legislation, or both.
Toronto IP Scholars' W-I-P Workshops
In 2023, IP Osgoode hosted the inaugural Toronto IP Scholars' Works-in-Progress Workshop.
This workshop series offers an opportunity for locally-based IP scholars, whether established or emerging, to present draft papers and workshop their work-in-progress with other colleagues and experts in the field.
If you have a current project you would like to workshop, please contact us at iposgoode@osgoode.yorku.ca.