Ipilogue

  Bill C-8 (the Combating Counterfeit Products Act, previously known as Bill C-56) passed third reading in the House of Commons on October 2, 2014, and is now before the Senate for further review. The Bill proposes a number of legislative changes to the Canadian IP regime. One of its main objectives is to create […]

Converse, a subsidiary of Nike[1], has recently filed 22 separate lawsuits against 31 retailers and shoe designers, claiming trademark infringement for the design of their classic “Converse All Stars” shoes. Defendants include giant retailers Kmart and Wal-Mart and designers such as Sketchers, Fila and H&M.

IP Osgoode would like to thank everyone who attended Dr. Emily Hudson's lecture, titled “Copyright Exceptions as Users' Rights? An Empirical Critique,” on September 29, 2014 at Osgoode Hall Law School. The video of the lecture is available here. You can also read Joseph Turcotte's reflections of Professor Hudson's presentation here.

American IP scholar Mark Lemley aptly characterized the dynamic relationship between IP and competition law as a swinging pendulum, in which antitrust enforcement of IP has cycled from under-protection to over-protection since the enactment of the Sherman Act in 1890. The United States Supreme Court’s recent affirmation of antitrust scrutiny in patent litigation indicated that […]

If you're a gamer, you're probably familiar with the Steam game distribution platform, estimated to account for 75 percent of all online game purchases. Online game purchases have surged in recent years, owing greatly to their convenience -- one can buy a game from home and play it nearly immediately. However, as sales have grown, […]

The recently announced decision of the United States District Court in Manhattan, UMG v. Escape Media Group (Grooveshark), serves to further elucidate the terms on which service providers can expect legal protection if their users are found to be uploading infringing content. More importantly, it gives us an excellent example of the differences between the US […]

On October 23rd and 24th, inventors, law students, lawyers, patent agents, patent portfolio managers, policy analysts, Canadian Intellectual Property Office’s (CIPO) patent examiners and other stakeholders of the patent system convened at Osgoode for the IP Hackathon. Inspired by similar events at Stanford, Professor Giuseppina D’Agostino, the Founder and Director of IP Osgoode, decided to […]

On September 23, Canada’s Competition Bureau (“the Bureau”) announced  landmark guidelines regarding the consideration of pharmaceutical patent litigation settlements under Canada’s competition law framework. The Bureau’s guidelines on this issue were released as part of a white paper titled Patent Litigation Settlement Agreements: A Canadian Perspective. These settlement agreements attract concern from competition regulators due […]

IP Osgoode would like to thank everyone who attended Professor Graeme B. Dinwoodie's lecture, titled “Territoriality of Trademarks in a Post-National Era,” on September 18, 2014 at Osgoode Hall Law School. The video of the lecture is available here. You can also read Jamie Franks' reflections of Professor Dinwoodie's presentation here.  

Knockoffs run rampant in the retail and fashion industries. For those of us that are fashion-forward but not looking to incur debilitating debt, we resign ourselves to settling for the closest lookalike. But while these products may save us some money, it is usually at the expense of designers from whose unique and original work […]