Natalie��Bravo is an��IPilogue��Writer and a 2L JD Candidate at��Osgoode��Hall Law School.��

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The colourful Pride flag is a widely recognized LGBTQ+ symbol. The rainbow flag was designed by the late , an American artist and activist (1951-2017). The design was inspired by the American flag and the history of the nation. According to Baker, The political activism of Baker’s close friend, , further inspired him to develop a visible proclamation of pride.

Today, the rainbow flag is an symbol—so much so that it is recognized by a prominent art institution, In 2015, the flag joined MoMA’s permanent design collection as a Despite the worldwide acclaim, Baker with the flag. He deliberately wanted it to be a free symbol for all, with unlimited use.

Before the Pride flag’s creation, The triangle was created in Nazi Germany to identify and stigmatize homosexuals who were seen as a during World War II. Though reclaimed by the LGBTQ+ community, the symbol was effectively an oppressive device carrying an incredibly negative and traumatic history. something to celebrate love.

in 1974. Milk was an American politician, remembered for his activism and for being . Before his in 1978, Milk led a positive civil rights-focused campaign, and challenged Baker to create a positive pride symbol of hope. Baker was by his friend . to design a symbol for

The 1970s were a markedly rebellious and productive time for gay rights activism. The of 1969 were a series of riots in response to police raids that specifically targeted gay communities. Stonewall is widely regarded as the first ever Pride event. The riots sparked a decades-long that accomplished a wide array of legal rights and acceptance for LGBTQ+ individuals worldwide.

The first Pride flags were at the in San Francisco (SF). Baker, then 27, along with about thirty volunteers fundraised and gathered thousands of . The collaborative flag-making was important to Baker, as it demonstrated a genuine connection to each other and the community. These first flags were raised in the After Milk’s death later that year, , led by . This spurred increased demand for the rainbow symbol and the start of something new.

In one of his last , Baker stated, “we needed something to express our joy, our beauty, our power. And the rainbow did that.” Initially, the flag was made up of . The colours were cut down to seven, to meet demand, and then down to six, for greater visibility from afar. For Baker, a rainbow was a of hope and each colour represented an aspect of pride.

Hot Pink = Sex, Red = Life, Orange = Healing, Yellow = Sunlight, Green = Nature, Turquoise = Magic/Art, Indigo = Serenity, Violet = Spirit

“Original 8 color Flag: 1978” available at .

Up until his death, Baker continued his activism and utilized the flag for such purposes. In 1994, for the 25^th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, he prepared a . When he passed in 2017, he was to commemorate Stonewall’s 50th anniversary. His life’s work solidified him as an important LGBTQ+ figure.

Through the years, the Pride flag has gone through several redesigns by various individuals. Notably, in 2018, designer Daniel Quasar updated the flag in the name of diversity and inclusion to create the . Quasar added five more colours to represent racialized and transgender communities, as well as lives lost to AIDS. Redesigns like these are legally possible due to the public use nature of the Pride flag. However, unlike Baker, Quasar released their flag under a , keeping some control over their redesign. They received for this decision, as many share Baker’s sentiment that a Pride flag should be owned by all.

“Progress” Pride Flag by����is licensed under a��.

What people may not know of Baker’s famous Pride symbol is that the original flag came close to being from public use. In 1978, Baker visited LGBTQ+ focused civil rights attorney seeking trademark assistance regarding the flag. An advocacy organization tried to register the copyright of the flag as their own. The group alleged that since the flags were created at the centre, it belonged to them. Baker this with the help of Coles. He didn’t want the flag for himself, nor did he want compensation. Throughout his life, he chose never to enforce his ownership under the U.S. Baker maintained that the flag should be for public use and owned by everyone.

The rainbow Pride flag lives on as a world-famous symbol thanks to Baker’s critical IP decisions. The undeniable hues can be seen almost everywhere this June. It is difficult for me to imagine what the status of the rainbow flag as a Pride symbol would be had it been successfully restricted under U.S. law.

The post A Brief Look at the Pride Flag’s History & IP appeared first on IPOsgoode.

The claimant, Response Clothing, designs and markets various pieces of clothing. The defendant, Edinburgh Woollen, is a major clothing retailer with about 400 stores in the UK. Between December 2009 and 2012, Response Clothing provided Edinburgh Woollen with various women’s tops made of a jacquard fabric. This jacquard material consists of wave-like designs that are woven into the fabric. When Response Clothing increased the price of the tops sold to the defendant in 2012, Edinburgh Woollen decided to change suppliers. The defendant provided the new supplier a sample of Response Clothing’s top and has changed suppliers various times throughout the last five years while maintaining the same wave-like jacquard design. As a result, Response Clothing claims that copyright subsists in its fabric’s design, either as a graphic work or as a work of artistic craftsmanship as per section 4 of the (the CPDA). Given the nature of Response Clothing’s relationship with Edinburgh Woollen between 2009 to 2012, Response Clothing further claims that it is the owner of that copyright and that all other supplier designs of the wave-like jacquard design are both primary and secondary acts of infringement.�� ��

Though the Court concluded that the definition of a graphic work could not be extended to include a fabric design, it was established that the creation of the wave-like jacquard design qualified as a work of artistic craftsmanship. The Court concluded that the wave-like design required skillful workmanship and produced aesthetic appeal. Additionally, at paragraph 64 of the decision, the Court provided the following guidance with respect to the definition of artistic craftsmanship in the UK:

[…] (i) it is possible for an author to make a work of artistic craftsmanship using a machine, (ii) aesthetic appeal can be of a nature which causes the work to appeal to potential customers and (iii) a work is not precluded from being a work of artistic craftmanship solely because multiple copies of it are subsequently made and marketed.

Having concluded that copyright existed in the wave-like fabric design, the Court determined that the garments sold by Edinburgh after 2012 copied a substantial part of Response Clothing’s design, amounting to secondary infringement contrary to section 23 of the CPDA.

Written by Alessia Monastero, IPilogue editor and articling student at Deeth Williams Wall LLP.

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We live at a unique time, a time of profound global economic, social and cultural shift. The pace of change around us is only increasing. Innovations born in the next few years are going to create the new economy based on solving the critical issues facing humanity: sustainable energy; transportation; life sciences; research in cancer and other diseases, etc. Innovation, as the 2009 Kauffman Foundation report on the economic impact of MIT argues, creates wealth and economic and social progress. (Entrepreneurial Impact: The Role of MIT, Roberts, Eesley, 2009). According to the report, active companies spawned by the MIT ecosystem are equivalent in revenue to the seventeenth-largest economy in the world. Closer to home, an outstanding initiative to create a similar centre of excellence in research and innovation is The MaRS Centre in Toronto. Innovation and design are not only increasingly important competitive business tools and agents of social change in the new global economy, but their outcomes are mission critical intellectual assets.

In creating the new course in Management of Innovation + Design (MGMT6800U) at the Schulich Business School at 91��ɫ, my colleagues Robert Kozinets, Kelly Parke and I, have recognized the multi disciplinary nature of the innovation process. As such, we have identified a number of areas of research and expertise critical to innovation. I call the approach of identifying the various salient practices of innovation –Innovation Mapping. One of the key components of this map is the strategic role of Intellectual Property rights. Between patents, trademarks and copyrights, IP provides a wide blanket of protection for the innovator’s financial and intellectual investment in their invention, branding and design.

Last week, we had a pleasure of hosting at Schulich, Rex Shoyama, Assistant Director of IP Osgoode and David Meurer, Senior Research Assistant at ArtMob. In our panel discussion, we quickly realized how much IP practice shares with innovation, entrepreneurship and almost any business practice today, the experience of being affected by the new, emerging technologies and cultural practices of the open source movement, social media, convergent media and participatory culture. The new disruptive technologies associated with the Web 2.0, cloud computing, peer to peer transfer, mp3, open source innovation model, etc, challenge the existing business models as much as they do the current Intellectual Property practice. Witness the well publicized struggles of the major music labels with the free for all attitudes of the young generation of music fans. The answers to these dilemmas lie as much in the knowledge of business and law, as they do in the understanding of the relationship between technology and cultural practices. Prompted by these new developments, both entrepreneurs and IP practitioners have a unique opportunity to be inspired to develop new business models and ways of thinking, which better reflect today’s social goals and values. As the International Expert Group on Biotechnology, Innovation and Intellectual Property argues in their , “The twilight of Old IP does not signal the end of the importance of IP. We are entering a New IP era, in which IP is used to sustain and maintain collaborations and partnerships, so that knowledge gets to those who need it most to produce and disseminate new products and services”.

We believe that a continuing, vigorous exchange of ideas between our respective communities, focused on many common issues and outcomes can only enrich the discourse and benefit all concerned. In this spirit, we would like to encourage any Osgoode students and faculty, interested in Innovation & Design as strategic areas of inquiry, to contact me or my colleague Kelly Parke to get involved in our classes, discussions or our blog. You can reach us at: pzak@schulich.yorku.ca or kparke@yorku.ca.

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Although Dr. Howard’s paper is written with a focus on the innovation systems in Australia and uses primarily Australian examples to illustrate his points, it seems plausible that Canada’s innovative infrastructure could similarly benefit from an enhanced emphasis on creativity and the design of various products and services. He suggests that a primary reason for the imbalance between the importance that is placed on public research within the ‘hard’ sciences/technology domain and that which is devoted to building innovation through design and creative practice is that there is substantially less funding available for the latter. A potential solution to this problem would be to offer cultural institutions greater recognition for their role in contributing to innovation through their promotion of design and creative practices by providing them with greater financial support, including the institution of publicly-funded programs.

Dr. Howard ultimately stresses the importance of creating a national policy instrument, which would outline the processes required for policy formulation, implementation and review in this area. To effectively achieve this end, his report recommends the creation of a National Council for Design and Creative Practice. To sufficiently strengthen the economy through innovation stimulated by creative design, more concrete leadership is necessary at the national level. To allow Australia to effectively compete with the rest of the world on a level that is above the merely functional, greater funding must be devoted to R&D, specific to the aesthetic enhancement of various products/services. Dr. Howard purports that, to retain buyer enthusiasm and commitment in a highly competitive economic climate, businesses must go beyond achieving merely a combination of excellence in science and engineering. It is absolutely essential that they also achieve excellence in design and creative practice, without which, the ability to effectively differentiate between functionally similar competitors would be extremely unlikely, if not impossible.

This report suggests that the implementation of a National Council for Design and Creative Practice would be based on the UK’s Design Council and would be divided into the following 5 areas: (1) influencing national policy and ensuring that design and creative practice are at the heart of government thinking in innovation policy, (2) delivering design and creative practice support programs for Australian businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, (3) initiating new thinking about ways to design public services around the needs of people who use them, (4) running programs to get people involved in exploring how design can improve their lives, (5) providing government with authoritative design research, knowledge and signposting.

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