The IPilogue is IP Osgoode’s online journal of IP Law and Technology. It publishes analysis and commentary on current pressing intellectual property, technology, privacy and related legal issues. The IPilogue features curated contributions from students, scholars, and experts within the Osgoode community, from our network of affiliated researchers and partners, as well as from professionals and scholars in disciplines outside of law.
Editor in Chief: Prof. Carys Craig (ccraig@osgoode.yorku.ca)
Submission inquiries: iposgoode@osgoode.yorku.ca
Liberal MP Marlene Jennings has taken it upon herself to re-table her lawful access bill, called the Modernization of Investigative Techniques Act (MITA). Bill C-285 proposes to facilitate lawful interception of information transmitted via telecom service providers (TSP). The purpose delineated in the Act is: “... to ensure that [TSPs] have the capability to enable […]
On March 18th, MIT announced that its faculty had unanimously voted to adopt a university wide open access policy. The policy mandates that faculty must make a copy of any scholarly articles they publish available to be included in MIT’s freely accessible online repository. This follows recent similar announcements from Harvard Law School, Harvard Faculty […]
Although copyright issues have consumed the spotlight when it comes to Google Books, a recent thread has suggested that this feature may be of great use when it comes to patent prosecution. More specifically, the suggestion has been that Google Books has potential to become useful for prior art searching undertaken during preparation of a patent […]
Ann Bartow is a Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina School of Law. One of the cases that always troubled me when I taught Trademark Law was Qualitex v. Jacobson Products Co., in which the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that colors alone could constitute protectable trademarks. Colors could always be protected as part […]
Chris Castle is Managing Partner of Christian L. Castle Attorneys, Los Angeles and San Francisco. As Kate Lacey correctly notes in her post, the Google Books settlement creates what is essentially a single purpose private compulsory licensing regime benefiting only Google-assuming the settlement is approved at the upcoming fairness hearing for which the filing deadline […]
Ticket Scalping is getting a lot of attention in Canada lately. In Ontario, Premier Dalton McGuinty made headlines by threatening to introduce legislation to stem TicketMaster’s practice of diverting potential purchasers to its resell site TicketsNow. In Saskatchewan, the Ministry of Justice and the Attorney General recently released (Warning: PDF Link)a discussion paper concerning ‘Ticket […]
Kate Lacey is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall taking the “Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property” course. As part of their settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, Google has developed the Books Rights Registry, an apparently independent, non-profit entity designed to collect revenue from Google Book Search […]
Sheldon Inkol is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall and is taking the Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property course. According to Julie E. Cohen, the public domain is nowhere. And all around us at the same time. In her article “Copyright, Commodification, and Culture: Locating the Public Domain” (in Guibault, L. & […]
Jamie Goodman is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall and is taking the Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property course. The public domain in trademarks is composed of images, words, and phrases that cannot reasonably be granted exclusive protection because they are either generically descriptive, or because they are part of some shared […]
Reshika Dhir is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall and is taking the Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property course. A Trademark is any logo, word, symbol, name, phrase, image or a combination of these elements that makes an individual and company wares and/or services distinctive. On one hand, the producers/providers of wares […]