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.
As a result of the recent proliferation of social networking sites, a debate has emerged over the media’s ability to use photos added to user profiles, in the absence of express permission granted by the owner. Exacerbating this issue was a recent incident where all four of Toronto’s daily newspapers published articles regarding the murder […]
Digital locks[DLs] are ‘virtual fences’ put around digital content.1 An example is a password authorizing the access to an online music store such as iTunes. The government, through legislation, has the responsibility to discourage abuses of DLs. There are at least two types of DLs abuses that harm society. The first involves the actions of users […]
Whilst counterfeits are easily recognizable, the issue is the line between inspiration and knock-offs in the fashion industry. In this article, designers and IP lawyers differ on where this line should be drawn. I shall analyse these views and propose where IP law could draw the line. Is IP needed here? Theoretically, IP rewards “true” […]
In “(Digital) Locks are multipurpose tools, and can be used or abused”, Rusell McOrmond makes the distinction between digital locks on content, such as mechanisms on audio CDs that prevent users from “ripping” songs to external devices, and digital locks on devices, which only allows devices to play certain types of content. He argues that […]
In a recent Quebec Superior Court case, Justice Tessier issued an injunction closing down the file-sharing website, QuebecTorrent.com. The site allowed for the free sharing of music and videos among users. This is a perfect example of the long standing debate between the owners/authors of copyright and the users of copyright. Although this may seem […]
The four factors steering Fair Use (FU) exceptions to copyright infringement are found at s.107 of the U.C.C. FU seeks ‘to work its way through the relevant factors and be judged case by case’ (D 40), and unfairness in any one factor does not necessarily render the whole unfair. Precedent for FU indicates that US […]
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