In August 2008, New Zealand judge, Justice David Harvey, made a ruling banning the publication of the names of two men who were charged with murder, on news websites. His main concern was the ability of jurors to Google the names of defendants before trials, and easily access information on their past criminal history. He […]
In a judgment pronounced in early August, which will encourage the open-source movement (Jacobsen v. Katzer, available at http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions/08-1001.pdf), a US Court of Appeals (Federal Circuit) held that a copyright holder can control the future distribution and modification of her work (through, for instance, means such as open-source licenses) even if she has dedicated the […]
Update July 7, 2009: Barry Stork's post "Liberal Party of Canada and Green Shift Inc.: Principles Take a Back Seat to the Almighty Dollar" won the Gowlings LLP Best Blog in IP Law and Technology Prize Fall 2008 in Professor D'Agostino's IP class Even before Parliament’s dissolution on September 7, 2008, Jennifer Wright took issue […]
Bill C-61 has been met with much criticism from IP experts and users alike. Though C-61 died on account of the federal election, debating its merits is not redundant as we may see its return. As I see it, much of what is wrong with the Bill can be seen in the following example of […]
"Scrabulous" a game similar to the board game Scrabble was launched online, and made available to Facebook users as an add-on game, by its creators the Agarwalla's in 2006. By all accounts Scrabulous was almost identical to Scrabble in appearance (same colour of board), rules and name. In 2008, Hasbro, who own the intellectual property […]
“Green Shift” has become a familiar term in the Canadian media over the past few months. Plugging these words into Google draws up numerous hits, with the leading ones referring to the Liberal Party’s proposed plan to fight climate change. But long before Stéphane Dion and his colleagues decided to use this phrase to brand […]
What started in early 2007 as just another simmering lawsuit against YouTube boiled over halfway through the summer into a full-blown battle over Internet privacy. While it’s still unclear who’s on which side, it’s fairly obvious that in the end, users are the ones losing out. And for that, we have Google to thank. In […]
“Business method” (BM) is a generic term that has been used by many to describe various types of process claims.[1] Business method patents are patents that aim to secure the IP rights associated with a particular method of facilitating business. The Canadian Intellectual Property Office states that business method patents are de facto not patentable.[2] […]
Shakespeare was thinking about roses, but his question is of contemporary relevance: is our understanding of a thing conditioned exclusively by its name, or does it encompass its function and attributes as well? Jim Brown would argue that function prevails over form. A retired NFL player, Brown is suing EA and Sony for the unauthorized […]
Is online music downloading to the new millennium what marijuana was to the 1960s? It seems like nearly everyone is doing it and most have some way of legitimizing it. However, unlike marijuana, Canadian law has been seemingly unclear on the legality of peer-to-peer file sharing – until now. In July of this year, Justice […]