IP Osgoode is an independent voice that explores legal governance issues at the intersection of intellectual property (IP) and technology. The program’s researchers, collaborators, and students actively engage in some of the most important and cutting-edge IP law and technology related research and policy discussions of today.
Commentary and analysis on the latest developments in intellectual property, technology and privacy, featuring curated contributions from students, scholars, and experts within the Osgoode community.
Bill C-61 gives with one hand and takes away with the other: Granting time shifting rights but excluding library building Bell’s personal video recorder (PVR) featuring an external hard drive for archiving recorded television programs premiered when Bill C-61 was debated in Parliament. However, under Bill C-61, archiving recorded programs is illegal. Time shifting is the […]
This summer, following threats of litigation by Hasbro, owner of the Scrabble board game’s copyright, the popular Facebook application Scrabulous was shut down, reworked, and relaunched as Wordscraper, featuring a new layout, design, and scoring system. In the aftermath of these events, many Facebook users and content creators are confused. Creators are wondering to what […]
Can workplace information retained in a person’s memory constitute a trade secret? Until recently the answer was no, with courts applying trade secret protection to documents removed from an employer but not to those recreated from a former employee’s memory. However, the Ohio Supreme Court recently reversed this rule in Al Minor & Assoc., Inc. […]
Update July 7, 2009: Jonathan Giraldi's post "CIRA’s WHOIS Policy Strikes a Balance" won the Gowlings LLP Best Blog in IP Law and Technology Prize Fall 2008 in Professor D'Agostino's IP class In a hotly-debated move, Canada’s internet domain registry authority has allowed select groups to request the personal information of domain registrants, after promising […]
When American Airlines filed a lawsuit last year against Google claiming trademark infringement, many people hoped that this case would clarify the otherwise confusing jurisprudence surrounding the issue- whether or not Google allowing advertisers to purchase trademarks as keywords for advertising- is trademark infringement. However, in July the companies stated in identical emails, that they […]
The ideas that an inventor’s time and investments should be protected and new inventions encouraged through the granting of patents, underlie some of the justifications of our current patent system. Theorists such as Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham claim that patents are necessary to encourage invention at no social cost (1). Professor Heller of Columbia Law […]
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