As reported on Kotaku.com – "British Telecommunications, a multinational mega-conglomerate with origins dating back to the 1800s, is suing Valve, a video game company that can't count to three". British Telecommunications (BT) alleges that on-line services offered by Valve infringe on four U.S. patents held by BT. The patents at trial are broadly worded and could implicate […]
Edward D. Fast is a Member of Parliament, former Trade Minister, and Canada’s representative throughout much of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations. This is part 2 of the interview, in which we discuss specifics of the agreement, particularly issues in IP. Part 1 can be found here.
The Deal of the Century: An Interview with Ed Fast, Former Canadian Trade Minister The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is the largest trade agreement ever, made between 12 nations comprising 40% of the world’s economy. In an article written by Barack Obama, who championed the agreement, he claims the TPP will “write the rules of the […]
An overview of what the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement would change in Canadian policy The Government of Canada is inviting Canadians to read and comment on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), along with the government’s Summary of the Agreement, which provides an overview of how the TPP would affect Canada. The summary suggests that the largest […]
IP Osgoode would like to thank everyone who attended Dr. Matthew Rimmer’s lecture entitled “The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Copyright Law, the Creative Industries, and Internet Freedom” on October 8, 2015 at Osgoode Hall Law School. The audio-recording of the lecture is available here. To read the IPilogue's blog and commentary about the lecture, click here.
It has been nearly twenty years since the Uruguay Round of World Trade Organization (WTO) trade talks that created the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. In the intervening decades, multilateral trade negotiations have stalled and international agreements relating to intellectual property (IP) law have trended towards bi- and plurilateral levels. And, […]
In the past few years, policymakers, academic commentators, consumer advocates, civil liberties groups, and user communities have expressed grave concerns about the steadily increasing levels of enforcement of intellectual property rights. Many of these concerns relate to the “alphabet soup” of transborder intellectual property enforcement, which consists of the following: SECURE (Standards to Be Employed […]
It must have been really nice to have worked as an IP expert for the US Trade Representative (USTR) during the 1990s. Almost everything they proposed would become law. The global maximalist agenda had the large international institutions on its side. The golden age of international maximalism saw the creation of the WTO, the TRIPS […]