The Honourable Mr. Marshall Rothstein is a tough act to follow, especially when recounting his own majority decision. At the recent UNPACK SODRAC: Technological Change and Copyright Tariffs after CBC v SODRAC (SCC 2015) symposium, the former Supreme Court justice stood firmly by his decision in the case during his keynote address. The panelists during […]
Patent law can be a polarizing topic, but it is especially so during international trade negotiations. Perhaps this is because the principles of patent law create fundamental conflicts between those that own patents and those that pay for patents. Despite this divide, these negotiations, along with some international diplomacy, often produce patent chapters that fall […]
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 […]
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (“TPP”) agreement pages of both the Office of the United States Trade Representative and the White House display an understandable, if not provocative, logo extolling that the trade deal is “Made in America”. For a trade deal whose negotiations spanned the length of President Obama’s term in office, this is hardly surprising: with the end of […]
IP Osgoode recently hosted the Orphan Works Hackathon at Osgoode Hall Law School. Typically, a hackathon brings together professionals from a common field, such as computer programming, and assigns them a complex problem to solve. The organizers of the Orphan Works Hackathon used the same premise but invited a broad spectrum of stakeholders of orphan […]
Jerry Agar—host of the “Jerry Agar Show” on Newstalk 1010 radio—opened his IP Osgoode Speaks Series talk with an admission that he did not care about us. Following the fleeting moment where he (clearly in jest) cast immediate discouragement onto his own audience, he clarified his statement: the default position for Agar—and media gatekeepers, generally—is […]
Fail early. Fail often. For lawyers and law students, failure is anathemal; but, in the context of design, failure is a valuable learning tool. For three days starting February 3rd, innovators, law students, and stakeholders in the creative industries descended on Osgoode for IPOsgoode's second annual hackathon.
The Event Over the course of three days in early February 2016, IP Osgoode played host to the Orphan Works Licencing Portal Hackathon, a multidisciplinary and international event that resulted in a memorable proposal for an “Orphan Hunter.” While that may sound more like a discarded Stephen King draft than a solution to an important […]
IP Osgoode would like to thank everyone who attended Jerry Agar’s presentation entitled “I Don't Care About You” on January 20, 2016 at Osgoode Hall Law School. The video-recording of the presentation is available here.
2015 was an eventful year in intellectual property (IP) law worldwide. Canada in particular saw a lot of activity across all three major areas of IP in both legislation and jurisprudence. Topping the IP news charts was the proposed ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): a wide-ranging international deal negotiated by twelve nations, including Canada.