On February 13, 2013, enthusiasts of the written word were treated to a lunchtime talk by Mr. Douglas Pepper, a long-time veteran of the North American publishing industry and the current President of Random House/McClelland Stewart; additionally, Mr. Pepper has also recently co-founded a non-fiction imprint, Signal. The event, which took place as part of […]
A recent Ontario Superior Court ruling has attracted the attention of the copyright law community. On January 24th Master Abrams allowed the Delta Hotels v. Backus-Naur et al. motion pleading equitable ownership of copyright, an equity doctrine in many Commonwealth countries that is currently not legally recognized in Canada.
Peter DiCola, assistant professor at Northwestern University School of law recently released a study on the income earned by musicians from copyright protected sources. The goal of the study, entitled Money from Music: Survey Evidence on Musicians’ Revenue and Lessons About Copyright Incentives, was to analyze empirical evidence in order to justify the incentive theory of copyright law.
On January 28, 2013, to a room full of intellectual property lawyers at an ALAI Canada luncheon meeting, IP Osgoode Advisory Board Member Mario Bouchard, general counsel to the Copyright Board of Canada, presented his analysis of the initial impact of the Supreme Court' of Canada's copyright pentalogy and the portion of the Copyright Modernization Act […]
When trade and intellectual property collide, strange things happen. In a dispute opposing Antigua and Barbuda to the United States at the World Trade Organization (WTO), that organization authorized Antigua and Barbuda to suspend the application of the its obligations under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement).
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 […]
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single culture in possession of good traditional knowledge must be in want of intellectual property rights.”
On Sunday, Kim Dotcom, founder of megaupload.com launched a new site mega.co.nz in a move that has been called the next act in the biggest “SOPA Opera” since the bill’s inception. In this article, the IPilogue brings readers up to speed on the largest criminal copyright infringement case in history. Buckle up folks, this is […]
Giuseppina D’Agostino is the Founder and Director of IP Osgoode, the Founder and Director of the IP Intensive Program, and an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. 2012 was an action-packed year in the world of intellectual property law. There were flurries of reports, decisions, and new legislation that confronted many core principles of […]
December was a busy month for yoga guru Bikram Choudhury. On December 14, 2012, the United States District Court of the Central District of California granted a partial Summary Judgment in favour of Evolation Yoga in the case of Bikram's Yoga College of India v Evolation. The judgment came just weeks after a joint press release, filed on December […]