Nassim Nasser is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School and is taking the Patent Law course. Microsoft Corporation was, yet again, defeated when the United States Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit upheld the trial’s court’s decision in favour of the Toronto based software company i4i Limited Partnership (i4i). The dispute between […]
In a recent post Microsoft's Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Horacio Gutierrez, articulated the need for a global patent system calling it "a necessity, if national patent authorities are to overcome the substantial difficulties they face". With respect to patent applications, such difficulties include, increased number of patent application backlogs, longer pendency periods, […]
This blog post reports on the report of findings made by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) against a US-based company called Accusearch, Inc., operating as Abika.com (Abika) for collecting and disclosing data on Canadian residents without their knowledge and consent. This decision is noteworthy since it recognizes the harm done to […]
Recently the Federal Court of Australia introduced a fast track IP litigation procedure which makes copyright and trademark litigation faster and more cost effective. Studying the Australian fast track procedure is fruitful because Canada also suffers from expensive and time consuming IP litigation and because similarities between the two legal systems means that following Australian […]
Chris Anderson is editor-in-chief of Wired, which has won a National Magazine Award under his tenure. He wrote an article in the magazine entitled "The Long Tail", which he later turned into a book called "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More" (2006). In this blog post, I will […]
Canada's Copyright Act was enacted in 1924. It went through a series of changes throughout 1990s, with the last amendment being in 1997. In 2001 the Federal government initiated a public consultation but it went nowhere. The last two attempts of the government to modify the act were in 2005 and 2007 when the Federal […]
In this post I will focus on the ongoing debates regarding Deep Packet Inspections in Canada. I will also point out its extreme use in countries such as Iran and China. Canada A recent debate in Canada revolves around Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use of Deep Packet Inspections (DPI) technology. DPI provides a mechanism for […]
Recently the Working Group of the Intellectual Property Court Users' Committee for reform of the Patents County Court, England and Wales, has published proposals for reforming the Patents County Court (PCC). The proposal aims at providing more affordable and effective Intellectual Property (IP) litigation. Studying the proposal may be fruitful since expensive and time-consuming IP […]
A treaty to improve access to copyrighted materials for the visually impaired was recently introduced at World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) by Brazil, Ecuador, and Paraguay. The treaty received no direct objections, however, different opinions were expressed as to how to treat the proposal and other limitations and exceptions in the future. For many this seems like […]
The dispute between Microsoft Corporation and the defendants, PC Village Markham, PC Village Downtown - two software retailers in the Greater Toronto Area - and two of their employees, Syed Aziz and Johnson Ye, arose because the defendants were selling counterfeit Microsoft software, "software that was neither manufactured by Microsoft nor by any of its […]