and worldwide have continued to express deep concerns about Big Tech firms and their extensive collection of personal digital data, which affects how markets operate and compete. In a I coauthored with Professor Kean Birch of 91ŃÇÉ«, we dove into these policy materials, using to explore recurring themes in across various regions. Published by the , our work also sheds light on how the collection of personal data is portrayed in the latest review of competition laws, policies, and regulations, and the implications for evolving competition policy

Why Competition Policy Matters

Big Tech firms are powerful political-economic actors within the economy, especially when it comes to the mass collection and use of digital personal data. As , in a data-driven digital economy, they can therefore shape and dominate markets by structurally and strategically undermining competition through their constructed platforms—data-driven ecosystems that appear separate from the market. This capacity gives Big Tech firms structural and techno-economic power over their competitors, making it more important than ever for competition law to step up its game. Through a thematic policy analysis, our research reveals a series of key issues that policymakers around the world are identifying as important structural and techno-economic implications of Big Tech for competition.

Structural and Techno-economic Dimensions of Big Tech’s Market Power

A significant part of Big Tech firms’ market power lies in economies of scale, which can create tough barriers for new competitors to break through. For example, as points out, the high costs needed to start a business can be a genuine hurdle for newcomers, while established companies can handle regulatory costs much more comfortably. Additionally, the costs involved in switching from one provider to another can make users hesitant to change. As highlighted by , the digital economy has sped up the impact of these economies of scale, in part because personal data complicates how we understand market definitions in competition policy. The basic assumptions that guide competition policy often use price theory to define markets and identify anti-competitive behaviour. These competition frameworks therefore struggle to address situations involving seemingly ‘free’ goods (like search engines) or the trade of these free goods and services for personal data. , ).

Meanwhile, the techno-economic side of the power held by these Big Tech firms includes both the strategic and responsive growth of relationships involving technology and political-economics. This growth is aimed at connecting a range of stakeholders, including governments, businesses, users, and academia, with the infrastructures and platforms created by Big Tech.

Structural Implications of Big Tech for Competition

Scholars such as have highlighted the significance of the network effect as a key structural implication of Big Tech for competition policy. These companies have established themselves as intermediaries in building multi-sided market platforms. Network effects result from how the number of users in a network (e.g., social media platforms, search engines) increases the usefulness of the network to its users, thereby raising its attractiveness for new users. Consequently, as the noted in 2020, network effects lead to a self-reinforcing cycle in which users migrate to the fastest-growing network. With this network effect, Big Tech companies are amassing a startling amount of data, providing them with an enormous competitive advantage, creating barriers to rivals entering or thriving in relevant markets, and allowing the incumbent digital platform providers to expand into adjacent markets.

The second structural effect is connected to but distinct from the first: investments made by Big Tech firms mean they can scale up with lower-than-usual costs. As the UK's 2019  put it, ‘Both the scale and the data that the platforms possess on consumers make it hard for other players, including publishers, to compete.’ Economies of scale have provided significant benefits for Big Tech firms as they have grown quickly to dominate their markets. This is clearly becoming a cause for concern amongst policymakers worldwide (as seen in, e.g., , , , OECD 2022). The main negative effect of such economies of scale is the loss of market contestability: there are significant barriers to entry into digital markets because Big Tech incumbents benefit from first-mover technology advantages; there are also significant disparities in market information; and then there are disparities in the capacity to adjust prices because incumbents benefit from greater information (e.g., data collection) and higher processing capacity (e.g., computing infrastructure). 

The third structural issue identified in our paper is the gatekeeping role of these Big Tech companies in our societies and economies. Policymakers have thus noted that a few digital gatekeepers hold the keys to the crucial digital infrastructure that impacts our everyday lives—whether it's staying in touch with friends, finding job opportunities, or accessing information. Gatekeepers can control access to the users and their data, which can hold significant value for other firms wishing to connect with consumers. The fact that this vital digital infrastructure, including personal data, is largely provided by Big Tech, makes it tough for startups and competitors to enter the market.

Techno-economic implications of Big Tech for competition

The first techno-economic issue we identify is the capacity of Big Tech to enter adjacent markets through data collection. As the  pointed out in 2019, ‘The extensive amount of data available to Google and Facebook provide these platforms with a competitive advantage and assist with entry into related markets.’ Data-driven business models enable Big Tech to enter adjacent markets through the modular extension of technical standards and terms and conditions (e.g., APIs, SDKs, plugins).

The second techno-economic issue concerns the spread of market power through the creation of digital ecosystems as ‘walled gardens.’ An ecosystem is more than a platform: it is the configuration of technical devices, applications and software, platforms, users and developers, payment systems, terms and conditions, and other legal rights and claims and standards (see: Autoriteit Consument & Markt, 2019). As explained by the , through this ecosystem, end-users get locked in, reducing the opportunity for competition, even when products and services (e.g., Gmail, Facebook) are notionally ‘free.’

The third techno-economic issue follows the second: Big Tech reinforces its market power by creating ‘enclaves’ in which they govern economic activities. These enclaves are distinct from markets; they sit inside wider markets, , but gatekeepers can also establish the internal ‘rules of the game’ and control market information. Policymakers have highlighted various relevant business strategies and practices—including the setting of defaults, cross-selling, and self-preferencing—that reduce competition within these techno-economic enclaves.

Challenges of digital personal data for competition and competition policy

The mass collection and use of personal data by Big Tech therefore has structural and techno-economic implications for competition policy—implications with which policymakers around the world are now grappling.

A key consideration in these policy materials is the techno-economic dimension of data-driven leverage. Policymakers repeatedly observe that Big Tech enjoys a competitive edge, primarily because of its vast personal data reserves and its ability to limit other companies' access to this valuable information. Although any digital firm can gather personal data, having substantial data holdings boosts innovation potential and offers a notable business advantage. This concern has been underscored by the.

Already concentrated digital markets are likely to concentrate further without concerted action to change competition policy. Our paper demonstrates the growing awareness among policymakers of the important effects of Big Tech and personal data collection on competition and market power. Of course, there's also a looming concern that the winner-takes-all dynamics fuelled by data control could influence the future development of important technologies like artificial intelligence, which significantly depend on large training datasets.

'Damola Adediji is a Visiting Researcher with IP Osgoode and a Doctoral Candidate with the Centre for Law, Technology & Society at the University of Ottawa.

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International Conference: The Legacy of CCH Canadian Ltd. v. LSUC and the Future of Copyright Law

Co-hosted by IP Osgoode and the Centre on September 19-20, 2025, this collaborative international conference was co-organized by Professors (IP Osgoode's Director and Academic Director of the ); (Associate Professor and Chair in Law, Intellectual Property, and the Digital Marketplace, and Director of the ); (Distinguished University Professor Emerita at the University of Windsor Faculty of Law); and (Associate Professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law).

The full agenda for this packed two-day conference is available , complete with links to speaker bios, paper abstracts, and video recordings of the panel presentations.

The IP Osgoode Speaks series invites leading scholars and professionals working in the field of IP law and technology to present their current projects, works-in-progress, and recent publications to the IP Osgoode community, in person and online.

Book Launch: Intellectual Property Futures: Exploring the Global Landscape of IP Law and Policy (Ottawa UP)

On February 5, 2026, IP Osgoode was proud to host the book launch for this important new collection on , featuring discussion with the editors (, , and ) and presentations from chapter authors ( and ). Stay tuned for a forthcoming write-up of the event in the IPilogue! 

Copyright, Openness, and Inequities: Licensing African Datasets

3 October 2024

Speaker: , founder of the and Assistant Professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She is an Africa correspondent at , associate editor of South African Intellectual Property Law Journal, and the author of several articles on intellectual property and information justice issues in Africa.

Professor Okorie's presentation identified inequities in existing open licenses for African datasets and proposed guiding principles for an alternative approach.

Additional comments were offered by 91ŃÇɫ’s Professor , an IP Osgoode Affiliated Researcher and Ontario Research Chair in Governing AI.

A Zoom video of this hybrid event is available .

The Dabus Story: Can an AI be an Inventor?

22 Nov 2023

Speakers: Professor Ryan Abbott, University of Surrey School of Law, is leading the international litigation to establish whether DABUS, an AI, can be designated as an inventor under IP law.

Professor Abbott was joined in this panel discussion by Professor and IP Osgoode Director , and leading Canadian lawyers and (Bereskinn & Parr LLP).

Discussants: Osgoode graduate students (who was also the organizer of the event), Luna Xiaolu Li and Shadi Nasseri.

A Zoom video of this hybrid event is available .

Finding the Right Balance between Control and Access in a Developing Country Context—IP Law and Policy Making in Africa

12 Oct 2024

Speaker: is the Director of the IP Unit and the iNtaka Centre for Law & Technology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He serves on the Open Science Advisory Board for South Africa’s Department of Science and Innovation and has led numerous development and innovation oriented research and capacity building projects, most notably the Open African Innovation Research network ().

This presentation highlighted some of the key considerations for IP law and policymakers in Africa as they seek to modernize and contextualize colonial-era IP laws in the quest to promote innovation and development.

A Zoom recording of the session is available .   

Reframing Copyright’s Key Exclusive Rights in the Age of Access: Lessons from SOCAN v. ESA (SCC 2022)

13 Sept 2023

Dr. Cheryl Foong was a Visiting Scholar at Osgoode Hall Law School in fall 2023. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Business and Law at Curtin University in Australia, and an expert on copyright law and dissemination technologies. Her work was cited with approval by the Supreme Court of Canada in the ground-breaking case of 2022 SCC 30, which was the focus of her presentation.

Dr. Foong's parsed the reasoning of the Supreme Court of Canada, commending its efforts to avoid the overlap and duplication of copyright's exclusive rights while also querying the future role and relevance of the reproduction right.

A Zoom recording of this hybrid presentation is available .

Balancing Freedom of Expression, Copyright, and Trademark Rights: Art of Science?

31 August 2022

Speaker: Dan Bereskin is a founding partner of Bereskin & Parr LLP and serves as a mediator and arbitrator for a variety of intellectual property disputes.

The scope of copyright and trademark rights has expanded judicially for decades. A direct consequence is court decisions that arguably impact adversely on freedom of expression guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In this lecture, Dan Bereskin discussed how a balance between these competing rights may be achieved, either judicially, by remedial legislation, or both.

Toronto IP Scholars' W-I-P Workshops

In 2023, IP Osgoode hosted the inaugural Toronto IP Scholars' Works-in-Progress Workshop.

This workshop series offers an opportunity for locally-based IP scholars, whether established or emerging, to present draft papers and workshop their work-in-progress with other colleagues and experts in the field.

If you have a current project you would like to workshop, please contact us at iposgoode@osgoode.yorku.ca.

The post Past Events Archive appeared first on IPOsgoode.

Katie Graham is an IPilogue Writer and a 2L JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School.

On February 22, 2023, it was that Google is blocking news content on its platform for under 4% of Canadian users in a five-week test as a potential protest of Bill C-18. While Parliament referred to this secret news blocking test by the tech giant as “,” this reality of Bill C-18 does not come as a surprise to critics who voiced these concerns throughout the legislative process.

Bill C-18, the , was first passed by the House of Commons in April 2022 and aimed to respect online communications platforms that make news content available to persons in Canada. This would provide news publishers with a framework to strike deals with tech giants, such as Google and Meta, to share the revenue they receive when reposting news content from publishers.

Parliament stressed that Bill C-18 will help recoup financial losses sustained by the news media industry in Canada. However, there is great concern as to whether Google and/or Meta will limit or fully shut down its news aggregation services to avoid payments. These concerns are warranted, as Google its Google News outlet in Spain for eight years to avoid paying for links and snippets citing stories from Spanish newspapers and other outlets. Google also conducted similar news blocking tests in response to the attempting to pass a code similar to Bill C-18 which sought to promote negotiations between news publishers and tech giants. Even more recently, Google Google News snippets in Czechia in response to Czech Copyright Act reform seeking to compensate Czech news publishers.

The costs of Bill C-18 to Google and Meta are not insignificant, with the estimating news businesses to receive a total compensation of $329.2 million CAD per annum from digital platforms. Given that both and generate upwards of $100 billion USD per annum, the costs of Bill C-18 appear to be a drop in the bucket for the tech giants. However, the backlash from Google to a lack of input from the Parliamentary Budget Officer as to how this figure was calculated. Parliament consulted the Australian Communication and Media Authority to learn more about its Bill-C18-like legislation implementation in Australia, so the estimates may have been based on Australian data.

Google’s news blocking test in Canada illustrates that the reality of Bill C-18 may go against its very purpose by digital platforms to link to news materials. This will not only limit access to online news content in Canada, but, more significantly, will further drive the losses suffered by Canada’s news media industry. , more than 450 news outlets in Canada have closed, with 64 closures in the past two years. With the second reading of Bill C-18 now in progress at the Senate, Parliament may need to reconsider its legislative approach to avoid further backlash from Google and Meta.

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Emily Xiang is an IPilogue Writer, a Senior Fellow with the IP Innovation Clinic, and a 3L JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School.

For the first time in decades, the US Supreme Court will engage with enablement in patent applications. On November 4th, 2022, the Supreme Court to review the Federal Circuit’s decision in Amgen v Sanofi, against the . Specifically, Amgen seeks to appeal a , in which the court found Amgen’s patents invalid for lack of enablement. 

The requirement of enablement in US patent law is codified in , which requires that the specification of a patent application “enable any person skilled in the art
to make and use” the invention in question. The in Amgen v Sanofi is whether this statutory requirement governs enablement (that the specification teaches those skilled in the art to “make and use” the claimed invention) or whether it must instead enable those skilled in the art “to reach the full scope of the claimed embodiments” without “undue experimentation” (characterized by substantial “time and effort”). 

In 2014, Amgen sued Sanofi for infringing on its patents concerning drugs for lowering cholesterol. The genus patents specifically cover that bind to the PCSK9 protein in the body. The patents disclose the amino acid sequences for 26 antibodies that bind to one or more of 15 residues found on the PCSK9 protein. Importantly, the claims at issue are considered , in which the antibodies are not claimed based on their structural components but rather on what they do. 

On January 3rd, 2023, many interested parties submitted to offer the Supreme Court their take on the issue to be considered. For instance, in a brief submitted by a group of , it was argued that the Federal Circuit’s standard imposes “an impossible burden” on patentees and that such a decision represents “a categorical shift in thinking away from teaching the PHOSITA and towards a precise delineation of the boundaries of the claim”. The professors further submitted that such a heightened requirement would be especially burdensome for patentees seeking to protect their innovations in the fields of chemistry and the life sciences, as “a chemical genus with any decently large number of species will never be able to satisfy the new enablement standard”. 

Other parties in support of Amgen presented some other reasons as well. In their amicus brief, the stated that the court’s reasoning “leaves patent practitioners guessing about how to advise client-inventors regarding the extent of disclosure required”. The , warned of the adverse impact that the new enablement requirement might have on the effectiveness of patent incentives for investors to contribute towards research and development, especially in the case of startups and smaller companies.

Moreover, the has filed a motion for leave to participate in oral argument, claiming a “paramount and unique institutional interest and perspective” – that is, the perspective of individuals and companies working in the chemical, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology fields. CHAL asserts that the Federal Circuit’s enablement standard potentially jeopardizes the benefits of many modern innovations and that adhering to the plain meaning of 35 USC s. 112 should continue to be the prevailing approach.

The Supreme Court’s decision regarding the enablement standard for functional claims could also have wide-reaching implications that spill over into other fields, such as technology and computer-implemented inventions. By too narrowly focusing on the “full scope of the claim” and “undue experimentation” instead of on what those skilled in the art could determine from the specification, it is unclear how broader claims for (such as those that describe the desired result to be achieved by the AI rather than its structural components or any specific software solutions) might fare in the face of such a standard. 

Amgen v Sanofi is scheduled to be heard by the US Supreme Court in the upcoming Spring Term.

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The Intellectual Property Institute of Canada (IPIC) and IP Osgoode are delighted to announce the 2023 edition of Canada’s IP Writing Challenge.

Our goal is to further enhance thoughtful and well-researched intellectual property public policy scholarship and discussion. We encourage a broad range of perspectives, and topics can be from within the various categories of intellectual property law including patents, trademarks, industrial design and copyright.

There are three categories for entrants this year:

• Law student category (LL.B, J.D., BCL, and LL.L students)
• Graduate student category (LL.M, S.J.D. and PhD students)
• Professional category (legal and business professionals who have been practicing 7 years or less, including patent agents and trademark agents)

The winner from each of category will be eligible for:

• A prize of $1,000 (CAD)
• Publication on the IP Osgoode website (iposgoode.ca)
• Consideration for publication in the Canadian Intellectual Property Review and/or the Intellectual Property Journal.

The deadline is Canada Day, Saturday, July 1, 2023, 5 PM EDT.

More details on Canada’s IP Writing Challenge are available .

The post Announcing the 15th Annual Canada’s IP Writing Challenge appeared first on IPOsgoode.

Prof. Carys Craig is the Director of IP Osgoode, Editor-in-Chief of the Osgoode Hall Law Journal, Academic Director of the Osgoode Professional LL.M Program in Intellectual Property, and an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School.

I am delighted to be writing my first IPilogue post as incoming Director of IP Osgoode! I would like to begin by thanking the whole IP Osgoode team, community, and partners for their warm welcome.

It is both exciting and daunting to step into the shoes of IP Osgoode’s Founder and outgoing Director, my colleague and friend Prof. Pina D’Agostino, whose creative energy and vision have been the driving force behind IP Osgoode since 2008. Under her leadership, IP Osgoode has become a key voice on intellectual property law and technology issues, forging fruitful relationships with academics, legal professionals, policymakers, and industry actors, while offering wonderfully rich learning opportunities to our students and graduate researchers.

With Prof. D’Agostino now at the helm of 91ŃÇɫ’s newly launched Centre for AI and Society (CAIS), we are looking forward to collaborating on interdisciplinary initiatives at the intersection of AI and IP in our new respective roles!

While I am indeed new to the Director role at IP Osgoode, I was a founding member at its inception and have participated in many of its events and initiatives over the years. I have been teaching and researching in intellectual property law at Osgoode since joining the faculty in 2002 and have served as Academic Director of Osgoode’s Professional LLM in IP law since 2009. In other words, I am very well acquainted with all things Osgoode and IP!

Looking ahead, I am keen to bring my experience and passions to this new position. I take special delight in guiding our excellent students to grow as researchers, editors, and emerging thought-leaders—a role I have relished as Editor-in-Chief of the and will now embrace as Editor-in-Chief of the . I am a big believer in the creative potential of collaboration and the discursive exchange of ideas, and so I look forward to hosting the IP Osgoode Speaks Series, workshops, and conferences on pressing issues in IP and technology policy. As a former Associate Dean of Research & Institutional Relations, I am committed to strengthening our institution’s research focus and scholarly networks, and so I am keen to foster IP Osgoode’s existing connections and to forge new ones. And as a proponent of consultative, evidence-based policymaking, I am excited to continue supervising Osgoode student teams for the Federal Government’s Copyright Policy Moot, as well as helping to craft and coordinate joint statements from Canadian IP Scholars. Above all, though, I am passionate about nurturing new viewpoints and diverse voices in these critical conversations. This is an aspiration that has been, and will remain, central to IP Osgoode’s mission.

Over these past twenty years, IP and technology law has emerged as a hugely important area of law which requires an ever-growing need for expertise and thoughtful advice. In today’s dynamic digital environment, new challenges arise every day, throwing established systems and rules into flux. With a plethora of policy issues to be tackled—from generative AI to intermediary liability, copyright term extension to unused trademark registrations, and controversial new bills in Canada on online news and broadcasting—the field shows no sign of slowing down.  

At Osgoode, our IP offerings have grown over time to meet this challenge. When I was hired, I was the lone faculty member in the field, stepping into the shoes of my venerable colleague Professor . Prof. Vaver has since returned to the Osgoode fold, of course—an IP & Technology Law faculty that now boasts Professors , , , , and our most recent technology law recruit, Canada Research Chair in Innovation Law & Society, . With these inspiring colleagues, our dedicated , our fearless Assistant Director , and an incredible network of , supporters, and collaborators, I’m excited to see what’s in store for the IP Osgoode team—and thrilled play this part in making it happen!

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Tushar Sharma is a 3L JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. This article was written as a requirement for Prof. Pina D’Agostino’s IP Intensive Program.

My name is Tushar Sharma, and I did my IP Intensive internship with VentureLAB, one of Canada’s premier technology incubators and a non-profit organization that supports start-ups throughout the early stages of their growth.

I joined the IP Intensive Program with the hopes that I would be able to work with VentureLAB, having a keen interest in venture capital work, technology, and intellectual property. This opportunity seemed like the perfect blend of all three and spoke to how I would like to practice law in the future. Needless to say, I had high expectations going into the experience because of how keen I was about the subject matter.

From the first day I had my expectations exceeded in every way. My initial introduction with my supervisor JosĂ©e was incredibly warm, open, and made me feel very welcome. She supplemented this introduction with having me sit in on one-on-one sessions with VentureLAB clients from the very first week of the placement. I was not expecting to be meeting directly with clients this early, or honestly at all given my limited experience, but JosĂ©e had enough confidence in my abilities to let me participate, and even offer my opinion to clients when I had something to say and felt comfortable. My supervisor’s confidence in my abilities helped me develop my own confidence in this arena, and I slowly began to become more comfortable talking to clients and offering IP advice as my experience grew.

As I spoke on earlier, I am interested in, and hope to practice, in the intersection of intellectual property and venture capital. This experience opened my eyes to the direct needs of start-ups, and the best way to serve their interests. As their resources are limited and they do not often have a breadth of legal knowledge, start-ups tend to be IP agnostic, or at least unsure of the best ways to develop and implement a viable IP strategy. I think this is something that is often missed by lawyers, based on conversations with lawyers, and in order to best serve clients, I need to understand their struggles and also understand that every start-up is particular in their needs. Being able to be flexible, knowledgeable, and considerate will help me serve clients better, and those are exactly the skills I developed throughout my internship with VentureLAB.

The intellectual property department at VentureLAB is fairly small relative to other internships in the IP Intensive program, but I think I preferred it to be organized in this manner. This gave me a lot more one-on-one time with my supervisor, and it created an environment where we could lean on one another, bounce ideas off each other, and work through intellectual property issues plaguing clients as a team. What really helped this process was how much Josée respected me, valued my opinions, and took in what I had to offer despite her having vastly more experience than me in this arena. Josée understood that, as a law student, I tackle issues from a different perspective from her and she would often look to me for a legal perspective, which clients often found valuable (with the explicit caveat that nothing either of us stated was legal advice in any way, shape or form). Moreover, this allowed me to learn and absorb techniques that my supervisor used in breaking down complicated IP processes into palatable information sessions. Being able to learn and observe how the IP was structured at VentureLAB gave me a holistic understanding of effective IP strategization at a successful enterprise.

Outside of my direct IP experience with VentureLAB, the team at the company is phenomenal and their familial culture makes it easy to integrate and feel like a part of the team, even in the short amount of time I was there. VentureLAB is filled with people who are willing to learn, teach, work hard, and have fun. I never had a negative experience with any of my colleagues, and I believe I have built lifelong connections with some of my peers there. My experience was also enhanced by the fact that I was able to participate in VentureLAB’s premier annual conference on Canadian hardware innovation, HardTech. Given the breadth of knowledge and experience on the team, I was able to learn a lot during my placement, and this experience has been invaluable to my growth and future career as a lawyer.

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Androu Waheeb is an IP Innovation Clinic Coordinator and a 3L JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. This article was written as a requirement for Prof. Pina D’Agostino’s IP Intensive Program.

CodeX: The Epitome of Legal Innovation

I was incredibly fortunate to have been placed at CodeX, the multidisciplinary legal informatics team at Stanford University. The team connects talented computer scientists with expert lawyers to find technological solutions for pressing access to justice dilemmas. During my rotation, the team was committed to developing a platform that would enable the democratization of insurance contracts. Naturally, many of the conversations centred around exploring technical solutions for technical problems and strategic decision-making.

Starting at the Very Beginning

Despite being someone that prides himself on a level of self-cultivated technical savvy and familiarity, my lack of formal engineering and computer science training became immediately obvious. The technical aspects of artificial intelligence, logic programming, deep learning, and computable contracts eluded me. I was way out of my league, and I knew it. I had much to learn to be able to understand the team’s concerns and become useful.

Every member of the CodeX team offered to schedule a meeting with me to explain their work and teach me everything I needed to understand. I enthusiastically took them up on their offers and am extremely grateful to the whole team for their time and effort. I learned the basics of deep learning and logic programming. Armed with my new knowledge, I attended every technical meeting and immersed myself in the team’s work. When I understood the technology and the predicaments the team faces daily, I came to a fundamental realization. The roots of some of the biggest technical complications were the classical legal conundrums that legal professionals continue to struggle with as well.

Dilemma 1: Precision vs Elasticity

First, computer language is necessarily surgically precise and explicit. Thereby, the utilization of technology is predicated on the ability to translate legal documents into precise rules that the computer can understand and manipulate. For computable contracts, every clause of each contract must be coded using logic programming. However, contract interpretation is an art. It requires the interpreter to grapple with inherent linguistic elasticity and ambiguity that produces opposing but plausible outcomes. This is a problem that lawyers are very familiar with. Courts usually grapple with this by retroactively exploring the contractual language for a juncture at which the reasonable minds of the parties met while operating within the bounds of justice, public policy, established legal doctrines, and statutory law. Simulating this process is a challenging feat.

Dilemma 2: Free Public Access vs Protection of IP

Second, the widespread adoption of technical solutions depends on realizing the delicate balance between enabling free public access and protecting key components of the technology. Free public access alleviates the financial burden of adopting platform-based technical solutions, which accelerates the desired universal implementation and expands the solution’s reach. As the platform accumulates users and contributors, it incrementally compounds utility and becomes an essential industry requirement rather than a simple convenience. Ubiquity, therefore, is not only the intended outcome; it is a necessary step in the solution’s implementation.

On the other hand, solutions that require adoption by the private sector must enable commercialization and protect trade secrets if they are to bring value to the very corporate institutions needed to make them useful. This limits the extent to which the free public access that makes the solution indispensable can be granted. This quandary summarizes the quintessential balancing act that intellectual property law has grappled with since its inception in modern society: how can one design a system that protects enough of an ingenious solution to incentivize innovation through the promise of exclusive commercialization while exposing enough to encourage social progress, adoption, use, and future innovation.

Multi-disciplinary Immersion: A Powerful Tool

While I did not personally solve those issues, I look forward to exploring the solutions that the CodeX team will devise. Instead, my immersion into an extremely talented and capable multidisciplinary team at the world’s most advanced legal and technical institution taught me something else I found foundational. Multidisciplinary teams can be extremely effective in bridging the silos of knowledge and skill created by the specialized educational model of today’s post-secondary institutions. CodeX is a perfect example of the interdisciplinary collaboration that is a necessary prerequisite for the accelerated materialization of the robotic age.

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Alice Xie is an IPilogue Writer and a 1L JD Candidate at Western University’s Faculty of Law.

Tech giant Apple has recently filed a against the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) and Director Kathi Vidal over the Office’s refusal to register Apple’s “SMART KEYBOARD” trademark based on genericness. A quick search on the USPTO’s trademark database shows that Apple first filed the trademark registration for SMART KEYBOARD back in as an iPad Pro accessory. The USPTO in 2018, and the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (“TTAP”) upheld this decision in 2021. Apple is now appealing in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

A string of refusals

After Apple amended their “SMART KEYBOARD” application multiple times, the USPTO’s final decision was a because it was a generic term for technologically advanced keyboards for mobile digital devices. The “generic” ground in trademark law refers to a that fails to carry out the proper function of a trademark to distinguish one product or service from another. Generics cannot have trademark protection.

In 2021, the TTAP reviewed and upheld the refusal, prompting Apple to put forth a narrow identification description of the mark and argued that the “SMART KEYBOARD” is an “accessory for a handheld mobile digital device, namely a protective and decorative cover for a tablet computer that functions as a computer stand and incorporates a keyboard.” The TTAP . After evaluating relevant evidence, the TTAP concluded that prospective purchasers understanding the term SMART KEYBOARD to refer to a genus of goods, namely technologically advanced keyboards for mobile digital devices. SMART KEYBOARD is thus generic and cannot become a trademark.

Apple is not giving up

Apple then turns to a US district court to appeal the USPTO and TTAP’s decisions. Apple makes a number of arguments to advance the distinctiveness of the mark. Apple, citing USPTO’s past approvals, points out that the Office has granted registrations to hundreds of trademarks that consist of “smart” with another word in the technology space. The successful registrations include Apple’s own marks like SMART COVER, SMART CASE, SMART CONNECTOR, and SMART FOLIO. Apple also highlights that competitors and the press use “wireless keyboard case” or “Bluetooth keyboard stand” in order to describe tablet cases with keyboards. Apple argues that this is a sign that they, along with consumers, associate the phrase “smart keyboard” specifically with Apple. Additionally, Apple argues that its use of SMART KEYBOARD has been substantially exclusive since the product’s release seven years ago, which exceeds the five-year period that courts typically consider to be a sufficient demonstration of acquired distinctiveness. Apple asks the district court to require USPTO to approve its SMART KEYBOARD mark registration.

Future implications

A ruling against Apple would uphold the bar for genericness in trademarks and, in particular, for marks that combine the term “smart” with a generic product. On the other hand, if the Court rules in Apple’s favour, the decision can inform the flexibility of a trademark in being considered generic or distinctive. As technology rapidly develops, the common understanding of the term “smart” may have changed from when smart technology first emerged. It is important to highlight current or recent evidence when trademark owners in the technology space are registering marks that are susceptible to refusal based on genericness.

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Sally Yoon is an IPilogue Writer, IP Innovation Clinic Fellow, and a 3L JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School.

This past summer, Amazon made headlines when it announced an update that would make Alexa capable of , just after hearing under a minute of audio. While people are still unsure as to whether this is heartwarming or just plain creepy, AI continues to evolve, with recent developments showing its ability to not only mimic human speech but also singing.

AI-based audio technologies have been making waves worldwide. Last month, Google announced “”, which proposes “a new framework for audio generation that learns to generate realistic speech and piano music by listening to audio only”. More recently, , China’s leading music entertainment platform, demonstrated the influence of AI in music. According to Music Business Worldwide, the company has released over - one of the tracks surpassing 100 M streams. TME utilized a “patented voice synthesis technology” called “Lingyin Engine”, which the company claims can “quickly and vividly replicate singers’ voices to produce original songs of any style and language.” South Korea has been a strong player, with its most prominent AI-based audio start-up, . The company claims that its voice synthesis and real-time voice enhancement technology can create a hyper-realistic voice that is indistinguishable from real humans.

So far, these AI voice technologies have largely been publicized as an innovative way of and preserving the memories of lost loved ones. Nevertheless, companies will likely aggressively pursue these technologies for profit. In fact, according to NME, (record label of globally recognized boy band, BTS), which equates to about $44.6 million Canadian Dollars. last month, HYBE’s CEO confirmed that the company plans to “unveil new content and services to [its] fans by combining our content-creation capabilities with Supertone’s AI-based speaking and singing vocal synthesis technology.”

HYBE’s huge investment in Supertone starts to make a little more sense once we discover that the company’s “” in Q3 2022 was its Artist ‘Indirect-involvement’ revenues. BTS’s success suggests how more entertainment companies will follow HYBE’s footsteps to increase profits without the headache of coordinating any physical appearances of its artists.

The development of voice AI opens a plethora of legal questions to consider. These issues were highlighted more recently by the recent - who is given permission to use it and does the artist hold any rights to license their voice to third parties for use in other films? More specifically for , how do we determine who owns the copyright to the work? Does it make sense to look at the creators of the voice AI technologies themselves or at the source of the vocal data (the artist)? These questions clarify that the development of voice AI places our artists in a very vulnerable position — suggesting a much-needed intermission for this chaotic programme.

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