Ivy Tsui is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. With a backlog of more than one million patent applications at the USPTO, the U.S. Congress has been pushing to reform the patent system since 2005. On February 3rd, 2011, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved the Patent Reform Act of 2011 by a […]
Ivy Tsui is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. With the increasing popularity of streaming videos on Netflix, downloading music on iTunes, and gaming on Steam, internet usage soars. Major communication providers such as Rogers Communications and Bell Canada have been restricting internet usage by charging additional fees when their customers exceed a […]
Ivy Tsui is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. In 2008, Apple filed a trademark application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the name “App Store” (serial number 77525433). Microsoft objected to this and filed a motion challenging this application on January 10th, 2011. The current status for Apple’s trademark request […]
Ivy Tsui is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. In Uniloc v. Microsoft, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit restored a jury verdict from April 2009 that Microsoft infringed a Uniloc patent for anti-piracy technology. The good news for the software giant is that the court tossed out the “25 […]
Ivy Tsui is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School The U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) filed an amicus brief to support the ACLU and the PUBPAT in a lawsuit challenging Myriad Genetics’ patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Previously on IPilogue, Dan Whalen covered some of the social policy issues raised by gene patents. In this post, I will discuss […]
Ivy Tsui is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School “Matooke” means more than just the word “banana” in Uganda – it is synonymous with “food” in the local language. However, a bacterium called banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW) has been infecting bananas in Africa, causing them to wilt and rot. The destruction of this […]
Ivy Tsui is a JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School Granting trade-marks to outré elements such as sound, smell, shape, taste, and texture has long been considered unconventional. However, as Professor David Vaver has foreseen, today’s “unconventional” trade-marks may become the “conventional” trade-marks of tomorrow.[1] In recent years, the practice of trade-marking sounds has […]
Ivy Tsui is a JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School On August 23rd, 2010, American human embryonic stem cell (hESC) researchers suddenly found themselves banished from their labs, due to District Court Judge Royce Lamberth‘s issuance of an injunction halting their National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding. The injunction, which led to the suspension […]