Last year, writer/director/actor Woody Allen launched a $10 million suit against clothing maker and retailer American Apparel over their unauthorized use of his image on a billboard advertisement. The trial is set to go before a jury on May 18th. However, on April 15th it was reported that Allen brought an additional complaint to the court […]
On March 18th, MIT announced that its faculty had unanimously voted to adopt a university wide open access policy. The policy mandates that faculty must make a copy of any scholarly articles they publish available to be included in MIT’s freely accessible online repository. This follows recent similar announcements from Harvard Law School, Harvard Faculty […]
Next Monday, the EU Parliament will vote on a directive that would retroactively extend copyright in performer’s performances and sound recordings (as they are called here in Canada) from 50 to 95 years. The proposal has been met with strong opposition from the European academic community, including an impressive, 100 strong, list of academics against […]
A settlement has been reached in the U.S. trademark/web linking dispute between law firm Jones Day and real estate information site BlockShopper.com. Jones Day had sought to prevent BlockShopper from linking to Jones Day’s site because they claimed BlockShopper improperly used Jones Day’s marks and gave the impression that Jones Day somehow approved or was […]
The WTO recently released its panel report on the US-China dispute over intellectual property rights. The panel found in the US’s favour on certain issues, with China winning out on others. Regardless of one’s views of the merits and politics of the dispute, it serves to highlight the difficult challenges faced in pursuing global intellectual […]
Glenora Distillers has won a trademark dispute before the FCA over the name of their Canadian single malt whisky, Glen Breton. The Scotch Whisky Association argued that the prefix “glen” has become recognized in Canada as designating a single malt whiskey distilled in Scotland and so s.10 of the Trade-marks Act should operate to prevent […]
A Northern Ireland court has barred a Belfast newspaper, Sunday Life, from publishing unpixelated photos of the perpetrator of a sex related murder who is now being released after serving out his sentence. It had been the paper’s intent to publish pictures to enable the public to identify the man should he end up in […]
The 2008 meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was held in Hyderabad, India from December 3rd to 6th. This year’s central theme was ‘Internet for All’ and the meeting focused on three main discussion areas: reaching the next billion, promoting cyber security and trust, and managing critical internet resources. These were followed by sessions […]
Lori Drew has been found guilty by a jury in a Federal Circuit Court in California of unauthorized access to a computer system in contravention of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030. The charges were laid after Ms. Drew set up a fake MySpace account posing as a 16 year old […]
Limoncello is a generic term for a type of Italian lemon liqueur. However, in Shaker di L. Laudato & C. Sas v. OHIM, the (European) Court of First Instance held that Shaker’s design mark, which prominently featured the word ‘Limoncello’, was confusing with the earlier Spanish word mark ‘Limonchelo’. The Court reached this decision by […]