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Who Inherits Your Likes?

Our myriad of online accounts for social media and other cloud services will all persist after our deaths. Until recently, not much thought was given to managing these digital assets after we pass.

Mining the Digital Gold Rush: The Legal (L)ore around France’s Data-Mining Tax

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 […]

Legal Challenges of Autonomous Driving

On September 25th earlier this year, California became the third state in the US, following Nevada and Florida, to pass legislation in allowing the operation of driverless cars on the road. Two short years earlier, Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab director Sebastian Thrun unveiled that Google had created the world’s first autonomous car.

Google’s digital library wins fair use against Canadian writers

Won’t somebody think of the children!? A New York federal court judge will. A copyright infringement lawsuit by multiple authors’ groups – including two Canadian ones – against Google and several universities for their HathiTrust Digital Library book scanning and digital distribution has been dismissed.

Reply all: BCer launches privacy class action against Google

A Sechelt resident has filed a class action suit with the British Columbia Supreme Court against tech superpower Google Inc. The claim alleges privacy and copyright violations committed by the Gmail content scanning process, which includes digital review of correspondence between Gmail users and users of other, non-Gmail accounts.

Google Plays Nice with French Publishers, Trial Scheduled in the U.S.

In June, Google, Inc. received some welcome news in France after the lawsuits instigated by the French Publishers Association (Syndicat national de l’édition) and the French Author’s Association (Société des gens de lettres) were withdrawn following a successfully agreed upon “framework” settlement. Google wrote on its European Public Policy blog that the new arrangement gives […]

Rosetta Stone v Google: Search Engine Keyword Advertising Trademarks Dispute Continues

At the heart of the Rosetta Stone v Google lawsuit is whether the sale of trademarks as search keywords for sponsored links makes Google liable for trademark infringement. Recently, the United States Court of Appeal for the Fourth Circuit in Rosetta Stone Ltd v Google, Inc reversed a significant portion of a Virginia district court decision […]

Oracle Fails to Predict Copyright Case Outcome Against Google

The copyright and patent dispute between Oracle and Google continues, however a partial verdict on the copyright side of the debate has been handed down.

Dramatic Expansion Of Patentability In The US: Google Acquired A Patent On Doodles

Xiaoyang Yang is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School and is enrolled in Professor Mgbeoji’s Patents class in Fall 2011. As part of the course requirements, students are asked to write a blog on a topic of their choice. In March 2011, Google was granted its long-sought patent for “Google Doodles” by the […]

EU Affirms Commitment To Homegrown Google Books Alternative

Ben Farrow is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. On October 27, 2011 the European Commission adopted a recommendation (2011/711/EU) calling for the nations of the EU to pool their resources and renew their commitment to the digitisation of European cultural texts and artifacts. These cultural materials are stored in Europe’s digital library, […]