Last month, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) denied leave to appeal in the case Eli Lilly Canada Inc v Novopharm Ltd, passing on an opportunity to clarify the controversial “promise of the patent” utility requirement for Canadian pharmaceutical patents.
The re-posting of this analysis is part of a cross-posting collaboration with MediaLaws: Law and Policy of the Media in a Comparative Perspective.
Superman – the superhero known to be faster than a speeding bullet and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound – seems to be a magnet for lawsuits. The iconic superhero with the ‘S’ on his chest was the subject of another long legal battle that ended earlier this month. Had the case […]
On November 30, 2012 the US Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal in the case of Association for Molecular Pathology v Myriad Genetics Inc. In particular, the Court limited its grant of the appeal to the first question posed by the petitioners: “Are human genes patentable?”
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.
DC Comics v Pacific Pictures Corp et al, the recent decision of a Central District of California court to deny termination rights to the heirs of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster, may be legally based in American copyright law. However, the case has its roots, loosely speaking, in Canada.
The re-posting of this analysis is part of a collaboration with Ashlee Froese. It appears that fashion's most infamous case has finally come to a close. Both parties seemingly came away from the Appeal decision satisfied: Christian Louboutin's trade-mark registration remained valid and exclusivity was maintained with respect to red soles with contrasting shoes; Yves Saint Laurent was […]
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 […]
In September 2012, United States patent reform legislation goes into effect. (The “America Invents Act.” or AIA, Pub.L. No. 112–29; House Report No. 112–98 ,112TH Cong., 1ST Sess. 2011. Referenced as “Report.”) The Report states that the AIA was the first “comprehensive patent law reform in nearly 60 years.” The legislative process took six years […]
Earlier this year, the Westminster Magistrates’ Court found that a young British student could be extradited to the United States to face allegations of copyright infringement. The United States Justice Department requested that he be extradited under the Extradiction Act, 2003 and the US-UK Extradition Treaty.