Intellectual Property in Canada (ipblog.ca): Intellectual Property Law

Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Intellectual Property Law Blogs

OR PHONE (866) 635-1838 for Bankruptcy Help, (866) 635-6190 for Divorce,
(866) 635-2689 for Personal Injury or (866) 635-9402 for Criminal Defense

Find a Local Lawyer

Bankruptcy (866) 635-1838
Divorce (866) 635-6190
Personal Injury (866) 635-2689
Criminal Defense (866) 635-9402

Intellectual Property Law

Intellectual Property in Canada (ipblog.ca)

Intellectual property law, copyright, trademarks and Internet law in Canada.
By Richard P.W. Stobbe

Post Frequency: 39.2/day

Last Entry: January 07, 2020 at 08:00:07

Amended Industrial Design Regulations

Posted on October 09, 2008
The Canadian Intellectual Property Office has introduced amendments to the Industrial Design Regulations which are effective October 5, 2008. The changes allow for greater flexibility in submitting design applications with respect to the colour and size of images, and permit the filing of colour drawings and photographs...

Patent Decision: Lapse of Rights

Posted on October 08, 2008
DBC Marine Safety Systems Ltd. invented an inflatable reversible life raft and applied for a patent (No. 2,233,846). During the course of any patent application, it is common for the Patent Office to send an examiner’s letter to the applicant, requesting further information or amendments to comply with the Patent Act...

Privacy Decisions: Biometric Data

Posted on October 01, 2008
What do nursing homes and nightclubs have in common? In these 2 decisions, they both collect biometric data on their employees. Biometric data can be anything that records “measurable characteristics” of an individual - from thumbprints to voice-prints to DNA...

Canadian Do-Not-Call List In Effect

Posted on September 29, 2008
The Canadian Do-Not-Call List (DNCL) goes into effect tomorrow. The CRTC (Canadian Radio-television & Telecommunications Commission) is coordinating the DNCL and starting September 30, Canadian consumers can register their telephone numbers on the DNCL for free...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Our Trademark Anthem

Posted on September 26, 2008
With glowing hearts, we protect our brand. VANOC, the organizer of the 2010 Olympics, has unveiled the new Olympic motto “WITH GLOWING HEARTS“. Of course, some will criticise the choice because it lifts a line from the Canadian national anthem...

Copyright: How much is too much?

Posted on September 16, 2008
Lawyers are often asked how much copying will constitute copyright infringement. Of course, every good lawyer will answer “It depends.” The recent Harry Potter case illustrates this issue: Author J.K. Rowling claimed that a plan to publish a lexicon (essentially an alphabetized reference listing Harry Potter characters, names and other information) would be a violation of copyright in [...

Green Shift: The Politics of Brands

Posted on September 09, 2008
When the Liberal Party decided to brand their environmental policy earlier this year, they picked the name “Green Shift” …and walked right into a trade-mark lawsuit. The mark GREEN SHIFT was already in use by a Toronto environmental consulting company...

Election Stalls Copyright Reform

Posted on September 08, 2008
With the announcement yesterday that Parliament is dissolved, and Canada is heading into a Federal election set for October 14th, the government’s copyright reform bill (Bill C-61) dies on the order paper. Canadians will have to wait until the dust settles after the election to see what will happen to the copyright debate...

Olympics and the Trade-Mark Police

Posted on August 22, 2008
In China, the birthplace of countless knock-offs and counterfeits, the task of policing Olympic marks must be daunting indeed. The trade-marks police must strive to be faster, higher, stronger than the offenders. French retailer Carrefour was recently rebuked for the use of Olympic emblems in its Nanjing retail location...

Online Privacy: YouTube, Google and Canadian Users

Posted on August 13, 2008
In the current copyright battle between Viacom and Google, the users (including you, if you’ve ever watched a YouTube video) are caught in the cross-fire. Viacom and other broadcasters launched a lawsuit against Google last year, alleging $1-billion in damages...

Domain Name News

Posted on August 05, 2008
A few notes from the internet and domain name world: CIRA’s revised WHOIS policy has been criticized by Michael Geist and others for its “backdoor access for special interests”. I have to disagree with Prof. Geist on this one. The ability of trade-mark owners to be able to defend against cybersquatters and trade-mark infringement is a [...

Retail Therapy for Brand Owners: Counterfeit Goods & Director Liability

Posted on August 01, 2008
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office recently announced that the value of counterfeit and pirated products seized at the border had increased in 2008, up to $113.2 million. Of course, that’s just the stuff they seized, and countless other counterfeits and knock-offs are flowing in...

Sticks & Stones: Online Defamation & Privacy Decision

Posted on July 22, 2008
What happens when a resident of B.C. posts defamatory comments on a usenet group about a resident of Australia? In this case, two men were engaged in a protracted and ugly name-calling session in the usenet group ?alt.suicide.holiday?, described as a discussion forum for persons who were feeling depressed and suicidal...

File-Sharing: A Questionable Win for Recording Industry

Posted on July 17, 2008
The Quebec Torrent case (past stories here and here ) appears to have ended with the recording industry claiming victory. Last week a Quebec court issued a permanent injunction against the operators of the P2P site, effectively shutting down the site and turning off the exchange of music files, television shows and other content...

Online Copyright Liability

Posted on July 02, 2008
For IP lawyers, these are interesting times. It isn’t often that proposed intellectual property legislation makes front-page news and in Canada, the debate over Bill C-61 has been front and centre. There is ample coverage of the proposed law in the media across the country since the bill was introduced last month...

Domain Name Update

Posted on June 27, 2008
There is a news story circulating that internet regulators are permitting domain names with an infinite variety of extensions - so users would not be limited to dot-com, dot-ca or the other 21 extensions which are currently approved. The piece I heard made it sound as if internet users could wake up tomorrow and start typing in their own [...

Domain Name & Defamation Case

Posted on June 26, 2008
A disgruntled ex-employee registers the dot-com version of the employer’s dot-ca domain name. Then, just before leaving on vacation out of the country, the ex-employee directs the dot-com domain name to a gay porn site. The employer sues for damages...

Canada?s Brands

Posted on June 16, 2008
A ranking of Canada’s top brands puts Research In Motion out in front, with its newly-introduced Blackberry Bold (left). The BlackBerry brand is pegged at a value of $5.6-billion, well ahead of the Canadian financial institutions such as RBC and TD Canada Trust that topped the list in years past...

Proposed Canadian Copyright Law Introduced

Posted on June 12, 2008
Today the Government finally introduced its long-awaited Copyright Reform bill - (Bill C-61 ). Of course over the coming days, media and bloggers will be dissecting it. But the immediate summary appears to be that the efforts to balance user rights (things like private copying, format and time-shifting) are restricted by anti-DRM circumvention provisions...

Broadcaster?s use of Flickr Photos

Posted on May 15, 2008
When can a TV broadcaster - or any news organization - use Flickr photos? Flickr is a popular photo-sharing site. People use it to share photos of every description. The site hosts millions of images. So when can a news organization download and publish a “newsworthy” picture from Flickr or Facebook, or from any photo-sharing site? After all, the Copyright Act (Section [...

Online Defamation Update: Doctrine of ?presumed publication?

Posted on May 12, 2008
This is the story of online defamation allegations levelled against Yahoo, Google, Wikipedia, MySpace and others by a B.C. man who says he was defamed by certain online postings. We have been following this defamation case since it was initiated (See:earlier post )...

Old Fashioned Trade-mark Infringement

Posted on May 08, 2008
I guess this falls under the category of “online law” - the proceedings of the Old Bailey (London’s Central Criminal Court) dating back to the year 1674 are now online. Here are a few excerpts from trade-mark criminal cases from the 1800s...

Copyright Law: Two to Watch

Posted on May 01, 2008
First, there has been much debate about when the Tory government in Ottawa will table their revised copyright bill. In late 2007, draft legislation was pulled amid an unusual groundswell of opposition. Now, there is renewed speculation that the bill will be introduced before Parliament breaks for the summer (assuming there is no election in the [...

Update: eBay and the Taxman

Posted on April 29, 2008
In a story we posted last year, eBay lost when the Canada Revenue Agency compelled disclosure of its records - specifically, records showing how much money was earned in Canada by so-called “PowerSellers”. The Federal Court of Appeal (eBay Canada Limited vs...

Technology in Alberta

Posted on April 24, 2008
As a plug for the local technology industry, we report that the Government of Alberta has just announced a few economic measures aimed at tech companies: Starting January 1, 2009, companies will be able to take advantage of a refundable tax credit worth 10% of eligible expenditures on scientific research and experimental development up to $4 million [...

Crash-and-Burn Case Study

Posted on April 23, 2008
This story is reminiscent of the dot-com days, when tech companies hit the wall at two hundred miles an hour. One day they’re flush with cash, enjoying the new marble floors and capuccino machines; the next, the doors are closed and everyone is laid off...

Trade-mark and Metatag Litigation

Posted on April 18, 2008
A recent US Court of Appeal decision (North American Medical Corp. v. Axiom Worldwide, Inc., 2008 WL 918411, 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, April 7, 2008) deals with meta-tags and trade-mark infringement. In a nutshell, the court agreed that the use of a competitor’s trade-marks in metatags constitutes infringement...

Dot-Ca Update

Posted on April 18, 2008
A new decision and a new policy: In a recent decision (Enterprise Rent-A-Car Company v. David Bedford ), Enterprise won handily in its dispute over the bank of names registered by Mr. Bedford, a BC domainer. The dozen domain names (enterpriseautorental...

Canadian Comment: Apple Sued Over Ad Copy

Posted on April 18, 2008
Million of colours or millions of dollars in damages? Apple’s lawyers must be wondering whether people have too much time on their hands. A recent California lawsuit alleges that Apple’s ad copy for its iMac computers is misleading because it incorrectly boasts “millions of colours”...

Patent Infringement Update

Posted on April 18, 2008
We posted last month about a Canadian company that lost a patent infringement suit in Texas to competitor Blackboard Inc. The Canadians lost another round a few weeks later when the judge barred them from selling the infringing products in the US. In a recent reversal of fortune, the U...

Previous | Next

Related Law Bulletins

When Government Inversely Condemns Property by Regulation, Magnitude of State Interest Has No Bearing Upon Just Compensation
The New Jersey Supreme Court recently decided a case in which a p...

Eminent Domain in China: Private property rights law opens the door to capitalism
by Priya Prakash Royal'The revision of the property law delivers a...

Property Owner Fights Zoners Over Planned Cross On Lake Michigan
Friday's Grand Haven (MI) Tribune reports that a St. Joseph, Michi...

Eminent Domain, Fifth Amendment Property Rights, and Government Retaliation
On June 25, 2007, the Supreme Court of the United States dec...