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Digital Books for Patent Prosecution?

Although copyright issues have consumed the spotlight when it comes to Google Books, a recent thread has suggested that this feature may be of great use when it comes to patent prosecution. More specifically, the suggestion has been that Google Books has potential to become useful for prior art searching undertaken during preparation of a patent […]

The True Colors of Trademark Law

Ann Bartow is a Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina School of Law. One of the cases that always troubled me when I taught Trademark Law was Qualitex v. Jacobson Products Co., in which the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that colors alone could constitute protectable trademarks.  Colors could always be protected as part […]

International rights holders take note: First Amicus Brief to be Filed Opposing Google Books Settlement

Chris Castle is Managing Partner of Christian L. Castle Attorneys, Los Angeles and San Francisco. As Kate Lacey correctly notes in her post, the Google Books settlement creates what is essentially a single purpose private compulsory licensing regime benefiting only Google-assuming the settlement is approved at the upcoming fairness hearing for which the filing deadline […]

VANOC Ticket Broker Suit Raises Concerns about Reach of Official Marks

Ticket Scalping is getting a lot of attention in Canada lately. In Ontario, Premier Dalton McGuinty made headlines by threatening to introduce legislation to stem TicketMaster’s practice of diverting potential purchasers to its resell site TicketsNow. In Saskatchewan, the Ministry of Justice and the Attorney General recently released (Warning: PDF Link)a discussion paper concerning ‘Ticket […]

The Privatization of the Orphan Works Issue Under the Google Book Search Settlement

Kate Lacey is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall taking the “Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property” course. As part of their settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, Google has developed the Books Rights Registry, an apparently independent, non-profit entity designed to collect revenue from Google Book Search […]

Locating the Public Domain

Sheldon Inkol is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall and is taking the Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property course. According to Julie E. Cohen, the public domain is nowhere. And all around us at the same time. In her article “Copyright, Commodification, and Culture: Locating the Public Domain” (in Guibault, L. & […]

The Overprotection of Olympic Marks in Canada

Jamie Goodman is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall and is taking the Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property course. The public domain in trademarks is composed of images, words, and phrases that cannot reasonably be granted exclusive protection because they are either generically descriptive, or because they are part of some shared […]

Official Marks: Ulterior Motive?

Reshika Dhir is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall and is taking the Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property course. A Trademark is any logo, word, symbol, name, phrase, image or a combination of these elements that makes an individual and company wares and/or services distinctive. On one hand, the producers/providers of wares […]

IP Osgoode Panel: Copyright in the Remix Era Part 2 – An Emerging Consensus

Not more than ten years ago, intellectual property was divided by heated rhetoric on both sides. The changing technological landscape had given citizens unprecedented power to copy, manipulate, and distribute art. If you were to attend a panel on copyright back then, you might have heard from a number of traditionalists in the music industry […]

Mario Bouchard: What’s new at the Copyright Board of Canada?

On March 23, the Toronto Intellectual Property Group and IP Osgoode hosted Mario Bouchard, General Counsel for the Copyright Board of Canada, as a guest speaker at a dinner event in downtown Toronto. Mr. Bouchard focused his discussion on four issues: the role of the Board, copyright fragments, factors causing the Board’s increased workload, and […]