I am delighted to be returning to Osgoode as Professor of Intellectual Property Law after a decade at the University of Oxford as the Reuters Professor of Intellectual Property & Information Technology Law and Director of the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre. The draw was Osgoode's establishment of a program devoted to research in IP […]
Today the Conference Board of Canada gave Canada another "D" grade for innovation. As indicated on the Board website, Canada is at the back of the class. As last year, where Canada also got a "D" grade, this should be another alarming call to government, industry, and members of the public that we need to do our homework. […]
Christopher Hansen, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, has become involved in a patent case for an "abstract idea". The patent in dispute belongs to Bernard L. Bilski: "In 2006, Bilski sought a patent for his idea that the weather risk involved in buying and selling commodities could be minimized if sellers had […]
Suppose there are two researchers, X and Y, who separately study the same thing, say, new energy. X wants a patent right for a financial gain while Y wants to make his results freely accessible to the public. Unfortunately, X comes up with a result one day before Y. Now, people have to pay for […]
In 1999, between 1.3 and 2.1 billion people did not have access to essential medicines (around 30% of the world’s population), with most of these people being concentrated in Africa and India.[1] In May 2004, after pressure from Canadian civil society groups and Stephen Lewis (the UN Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa), and in […]
During Professor Bruce Ziff’s discussion on Private Property, he referred to Garrett Hardin’s theory on the Tragedy of the Commons. The common hypothetical relates to the relationship of farmers overgrazing on common land. Since resources are finite, the over-exploitation of land by some members of the community results in a consequential detriment to all. Thus, […]
Let’s say I want to sublet my on-campus room for the summer. I’m paying $1,000/month. Because staying on campus is extremely convenient for whatever reason, but it is difficult to find a place, someone proposed me $1,200/month for the sublet, while others proposed less than $1,000/month. Which offer should I choose? And, if there is […]
Once again on February 11th 2008, the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) released its annual recommendations which it submits to the United States Trade Representative (USTR). The name taken by the IIPA may be misleading, as it can hardly be considered “international” in scope. The IIPA is essentially a US lobby group which aims to […]
Under Canadian patent law, the scope of patentable subject matter is still expanding. But under U.S. patent law, “anything under the sun made by man” is patentable. This has come to include patents for computer software. Software patents raise a debate over which algorithms are novel, and which are non-obvious. Some algorithms may arguably have […]
The proposition that consumers are confused by the use of geographical indicators (GIs) by producers other than those from the specified geographic region is arguably a weak one. Evidence that GIs have become generic terms in many countries bolsters this argument because consumers generally do not consider generic marks to be indicia of source. However, […]