copyright Archives | Research & Innovation

Celebrate digital culture at research event on Dec. 6

muellerm — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 10:00:00 +0000

Explore digital cultures research at a celebration co-hosted by six of 91��ɫ’s Faculties in collaboration with the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation on Friday, Dec. 6.

The event highlights the research of five 91��ɫ professors, a University Librarian and a former graduate student on topics ranging from sound, affect and digital communities, copyright in the digital domain, augmented reality storytelling, social media and oral culture at Ugandan heritage sites, digital technology design and librarian and information systems.

“This research celebration provides an opportunity for members of the 91��ɫ community to learn more about the breadth of Digital Cultures research at the University,” said Robert Haché, vice-president research & innovation. “Throughout the upcoming year, we will continue to highlight research in the five areas of opportunity for the strategic development of research, as described in the new Strategic Research Plan, Building on Strength.”

Students, faculty and staff are invited to the celebration, from 2 to 4pm in the CIBC Lobby, Accolade East Building. The event will feature mini-research byte presentations followed by Q&As from the audience.

Featured presenters are Faculty of Fine Arts Professor Caitlin Fisher, Canada Research Chair in Digital Culture; Osgoode Hall Law School Professor Carys Craig; Faculty of Education Professor Mary Leigh Morbey, associate director of the Institute for Research on Learning Technologies, with Mary Pat O’Meara; Stacy Allison-Cassin, associate librarian, 91��ɫ Libraries; Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies Professor David Cecchetto; and Lassonde School of Engineering Professor Melanie Baljko.

Caitlin Fisher

Fisher will speak about “Augmented Reality Storytelling: Emerging Tools and Practices.” Her talk will explore expressive tools for augmented reality content creation, both custom tools developed in 91��ɫ's AR Lab and a new generation of easy-to-use commercial tools, workflow for the production of immersive and handheld augmented reality stories, and showcase some of the augmented reality storytelling projects being created by Dr. Fisher and her students.

Carys Craig

Craig will present “Copyright, Communication and Culture in the Digital Domain.” Copyright law appears to stand at a dangerous crossroads, forced to choose between maximizing the potential of the digital revolution and reinforcing the norms of the analog world. This is a false dilemma. Digital culture should not be regarded as threat to the copyright system or the public purposes it serves; rather, the copyright system should be viewed as a threat to our developing digital culture.

Mary Leigh Morbey, with Mary Pat O’Meara

Morbey will present “Social Media Engages Oral Culture at Ugandan Heritage Sites,” with Mary Pat O’Meara, the videographer on the Uganda National Museum Social Media project. Uganda in East Africa possesses 100 heritage sites illustrating the rich culture of Uganda: little known by Ugandans and the world. Collaboration between the Uganda National Museum and a 91��ɫ Institute for Research on Learning Technologies research team is capturing the heritage sites through video and photograph, and stories of older people living in the shadow of the sites through videoed interviews in English and Luganda. The collected data situated in a Social Media structure centered in the museum website, preserves potential lost heritage.

Stacy Allison-Cassin

Allison-Cassin will explore “Disconnecting connections: librarianship and information systems.” Her talk will highlight recently published and current research exploring the frictions present in the philosophical underpinnings of traditional librarianship in relation to technology, with a particular aim to expose how assumptions about information systems and the bodies of librarians impact our ability to forge alternate pathways in the digital environment.

David Cecchetto

Cecchetto will discuss, “Sound, Affect and Digital Communities.” His research takes hold at the crossing of aurality, digitality and critical posthumanism. Cecchetto’s talk begins by describing the claims of critical posthumanism, and proceeds to briefly discuss a practice-inclusive research project that works from this position to demonstrate—practically and theoretically—the innovative potential of bringing aurality to bear on digital technologies.

Melanie Baljko

Baljko will present, “Digital Technology Design in the GaMaY Lab.” Her presentation will provide an overview of several research projects underway in the in the Lassonde School of Engineering. The presentation will describe and discuss some of the threads that are common to these works, which include: critical reflection on the hidden assumptions and values underlying the design of digital technologies; accessibility and barriers to digital technologies; obstacles in the small-scale production and development of digital technology; and harnessing modes of knowledge mobilization.

Organizers ask that interested participants register their by Dec. 5.

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IP Osgoode partners with OCE's Centre for Commercialization of Research on new clinical program

fmaquito — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 08:00:00 +0000

has partnered with Ontario Centres of Excellence’s (OCE) (CCR) to create a unique intellectual property (IP) clinical program that will match Osgoode law students with OCE-supported companies to help them secure and protect their IP en route to commercial success.

IP Osgoode, Osgoode Hall Law School’s Intellectual Property & Technology Law Program, and OCE, a not-for-profit corporation that drives the commercialization of Ontario academic research, recently signed a memorandum of understanding to solidify the program.

Above: From left, Trish Barrow (director of Commercialization & CCR, Ontario Centres of Excellence), Osgoode students Shirley Bai, Rita Gao, Sebastian Talluri, Andrea Dias, Hashim Ghazi and Professor Giuseppina D'Agostino (founder & director, IP Osgoode). Missing from the photo is student Jeremy Loeb.

“Intellectual property law is a key component in Ontario’s and Canada’s innovation agendas,” said Stan Shapson, 91��ɫ’s vice-president research and innovation. “The IP Osgoode/OCE project reflects our expanding research partnerships with industry and community partners and will further stimulate knowledge transfer between academia, government and industry groups pursuing innovative agendas.”

The IP Osgoode/OCE project will be launched as a 12-month pilot program with approximately six Osgoode students assisting OCE-supported companies with numerous IP matters – from patents to trademarks to copyright. The program will provide students with a combination of IP law theory and practical experience, while OCE is better able to support promising new companies, including helping them reduce start-up costs.

“This is a groundbreaking initiative for a law school to have a formal collaboration with a proven innovation driver such as OCE, at this level,” said Osgoode Professor , founder and director of IP Osgoode.

httpv://youtu.be/TZfuDwMVi3M

“These companies are at the early growth stage,” D’Agostino said. “They need help from a very early point without having legal fees and various other costs choke them before they can get up and running. Having our IP students involved with these OCE-supported start-ups while at the law school will minimize the companies’ IP costs because our students will be working pro bono.”

Initially, the students will explore general areas of IP, with a special focus on patent law. The students will then be engaged in a variety of IP activities such as reviewing IP licensing transactions, performing prior art searches, reviewing patent specifications, performing freedom-to-operate and clearance searches, assisting with the preparation and filing of provisional patent applications, and conducting legal research.

To better enable the students, OCE’s CCR will provide $30,000 for the project’s operating budget. OCE will work with IP Osgoode and a clinical supervisor to select the most suitable OCE-supported companies, based on the skills and knowledge of the participating students, the scope of potential projects that may come from a particular company, and other factors that are consistent with the program’s overall goals.

“OCE’s Centre for Commercialization of Research is delighted to be working with IP Osgoode on this initiative,” said Tom Corr, OCE president & CEO. “Starting with a solid IP strategy is essential to the successful commercialization of leading-edge discoveries. The companies we work with have limited resources, but tremendous potential. This partnership with IP Osgoode will solve problems at a crucial time for start-up companies that are poised to create jobs and strengthen Ontario’s economy.”

“For many high-potential start-ups, their IP is their most precious commodity,” said Mario Thomas, senior vice-president, Ontario Centres of Excellence, and managing director, Centre for Commercialization of Research. “IP protection is vital for technology companies to get their products to market, so the value of this legal expertise and guidance provided by IP Osgoode cannot be stressed enough.”

Osgoode Dean also applauded the partnership, describing the IP Osgoode/OCE project as “a robust collaboration that will extend the classroom into the realm of real-world IP issues and benefit both Osgoode IP students and the start-up companies.”

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Professor Marcus Boon's book and blog detail why copying is necessary to our evolution

fmaquito — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

A new book by a 91��ɫ professor argues that the act of copying, much maligned in our culture, is fundamentally necessary to our evolution.

, which was officially launched last night in Toronto, explores different aspects of copying and looks at everything from quilting and cooking to gang warfare and martial arts as cultures of the copy. Published by Harvard University Press, it features an entire chapter on the saga of Louis Vuitton and the fake handbags which have become ubiquitous today.

“Teaching contemporary literature and culture at a university, I was interested in students’ attitudes about sampling, cutting and pasting, plagiarism, downloading and such matters,” says author , a professor in 91��ɫ’s Department of English in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

Boon also blogs about this subject in the blog.

“What struck me is that they were completely unable to justify their interest in these things – mostly because they involve copying and they’d repeatedly been told that copying is bad. At the same time," he says, "when I looked at the literature on intellectual property, I was struck by the fact that most of it was written by legal scholars, who seemed to offer no analysis of copying itself, beyond the fact that it was a useful tool that could also be misused. So I wanted to rethink the idea of copying, and show how fundamental philosophical issues shape the way we think about it today.”

The book details how the dominant legal-political structures that define copying obscure the broader processes of imitation that have constituted human communities for ages, and that continue to shape subcultures today. In Praise of Copying draws on contemporary art, music and film, the history of aesthetics, critical theory, and Buddhist philosophy and practice to illustrate how and why copying works – what the sources of its power are and what political stakes are involved if we re-negotiate the way we value copying in the age of globalization.

Boon asks why copying another person’s actions or works makes us so uncomfortable. “If you really think about it, is there anything that doesn’t involve some form of copying? In order to speak and to learn, we have to copy. We can talk about plagiarism, and it’s true that very few people would say it’s good to pass off another’s work as your own," says Boon. "But industrial economies are built around making copies, most of which have their origin in something that used to belong to the public domain.”

He argues that we should all consider and confront the ways in which our lives are shaped by the act of copying: “We all do it, and our laws should reflect this. As a society, we should be asking ourselves what is the most profound or joyful use of our capacities for copying. In other words, it’s not a question of whether we should copy or not – but how we copy and what.”

In Praise of Copying was launched at the The Annex Live, 296 Brunswick Avenue in downtown Toronto, presented by This Is Not A Reading Series.

To download a free pdf of the book, visit the web page on the website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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