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Colours to dye for are worth $6.4M

How much does it cost to dye your hair? A home kit usually costs between $20 and $40. Some salons charge up to $200. In the heart of Yorkville, however, dye-jobs are big business. Salon trade-secrets consisting of client lists and client colour cards (a formula describing a customer's dye colour preference)  are apparently worth […]

Cheap Food, Terroir and the Blind Spot of Geographical Indications

Irena Knezevic is on the executive of the Canadian Association for Food Studies and is currently a PhD candidate in the Joint Graduate Program in Communication and Culture at York and Ryerson Universities. Food enthusiasts and artisan producers around the world know how important terroir is for a range of foods from cheese to wine […]

U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Rules that Turnitin's Fight Against Plagiarism Does Not Violate Student Intellectual Property Rights: A Dissenting Opinion

Stephen Sharon is a recent graduate of Touro Law School in New York where he focused on intellectual property.  Stephen was also the first place winner of the Nathan Burkan Memorial Competition sponsored by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) for his submission of a case study about the legal battle between […]

House of Commons Committee Considers Quick Fixes to the Privacy Act

The Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics recently released a report to the House of Commons about suggested amendments to the Privacy Act. The report outlined and gave opinions on twelve quick-fix proposals put forth by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. The Privacy Act was enacted in 1983 and serves the purpose of […]

Proposals to Reform the Patents County Court (PCC)

Recently the Working Group of the Intellectual Property Court Users' Committee for reform of the Patents County Court, England and Wales, has published proposals for reforming the Patents County Court (PCC). The proposal aims at providing more affordable and effective Intellectual Property (IP) litigation. Studying the proposal may be fruitful since expensive and time-consuming IP […]

The Adoption of U.S. Technology in Canada: Is All this Waiting Really Necessary?

A recent article written by Colin Campbell from Maclean's discussed the unfortunate fact that Canada is usually far behind other nations when it comes to adopting new technologies that have been developed in the United States and abroad. His discussion begins with a reference to the Kindle DX. This is the new, wireless e-book reading […]

Fighting click fraud

Click fraud is one of the largest problems faced by the online advertising industry, yet many ad vendor companies have largely remained content to fight it quietly. This may be about to change. Microsoft has recently announced that it will begin to actively pursue legal action against perpetrators of click fraud. The first attempt came […]

Virgin Media offers unlimited music downloads to customers in UK

Virgin Media and Universal Music Group  have taken the plunge into an ISP and digital music collaboration to provide customers in the UK with unlimited access to MP3 downloads and streaming of Universal label artists. Although the exact monthly fee for this service has yet to be determined, Virgin plans to provide the service for […]

Signs and Sensibility: Accommodating Non Conventional Trade Marks

Dr. Dev Gangjee (London School of Economics) has a primary research interest in intellectual property, including trademarks, geographical indications and domain names.  He is also an IP Osgoode Research Affiliate. Can a building be a trade mark?  Should a building be a trade mark?1 In recent years, trade mark registries and courts have grappled with applications […]

ICANN and Internet Big Bang

The announcement by ICANN to open the Internet to a limitless number of domains has been a cause of stir since June 2008 when Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) accepted this recommendation of its global stakeholders.  ICANN's website describes itself as a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation aimed at coordinating and maintaining the integrity […]