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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

Software License Upheld: Vernor v. Autodesk

Posted on September 14, 2010
For Canadian software companies who license their software in the US, this decision will be encouraging (Vernor v. Autodesk Inc. (September 10, 2010, US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 09-35969). Timothy Vernor purchased several used copies of Autodesk, Inc...

Update on Patent Strategy

Posted on September 08, 2010
Since when are bow ties a patent issue? Since clothier Brooks Brothers was sued for a false-marking claim, related to the long-expired patent for the ?Adjustolox? mechanism on their bow ties. Since the patents have expired but are still marked on the product, the company is technically open to a false-marking claim, and the appeals [...

Summer Break

Posted on June 30, 2010
ipblog.ca will be taking a break over the summer. We’ll be back in the Fall to pick up developments such as: Canadian Copyright Reform (with Parliament breaking for the summer, there will be no further Parliamentary debate on Bill C-32 until September); The US Supreme Court’s decision in the Bilski case (relating to patentability of business methods and software); Changes to the [...

Software Patents: Canadian Update

Posted on June 22, 2010
The Canadian Intellectual Property Office has released a draft version of Chapter 16 of the Manual of Patent Office Practice (MOPOP), relating to ?Computer-Implemented Inventions?. The chapter is open for public review and comments between June 16, 2010 and August 19, 2010 and is available through the MOPOP Updates web page...

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Apple?s Developer Agreement

Posted on June 16, 2010
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published an interesting article on Apple’s iPhone Developer Program License Agreement under the (strange) heading “All Your Apps Are Belong to Apple“ which is garbled from both a grammatical and legal perspective...

iPhone, iPad, iPod Forum

Posted on June 11, 2010
The iP3 Forum in Toronto on June 21, 2010 provides an arena to discuss the potential of Apple’s Touch Platform. A business track provides analysis and insights on how to leverage the Platform’s market potential. The technical stream gets into the details of designing and app development...

Copyright Reform in Canada

Posted on June 09, 2010
The Canadian government has introduced the next version of its long-awaited and much-debated copyright reform bill (Bill C-32, the Copyright Modernization Act). Here are a few interesting highlights: Format & Time Shifting: (Sections 29.22 and 29...

A Jolt for Privacy Law in Canada

Posted on June 04, 2010
The government has introduced proposed amendments to the Personal Information Protection & Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). The changes to the federal law are wide-ranging and will have a significant impact on privacy law here in Canada. Here are a few highlights from a business perspective of the proposed changes in Bill C-29, and once it passes into law, we’ll provide [...

Trade-mark Licensing: It?s a Control Issue

Posted on June 01, 2010
The trade-mark Moto Mirror is registered in Canada for use with truck and automobile mirrors. However, the owner of the mark did not actually manufacture the mirrors. In a series of licensing agreements, the owner of the mark authorized other companies to make and sell the mirrors under the Moto Mirror brand...

Exposing Online Identities: Another Update

Posted on May 27, 2010
When can an internet user remain anonymous? It depends…. As an update to our recent post about Mosher v. Coast Publishing Ltd., 2010 NSSC 153 (where the identity of anonymous comment-writers was ordered to be disclosed), the recent decision in Warman v...

Can File Extensions be Trade-marked?

Posted on May 21, 2010
Can you get a trade-mark for .doc, .pdf or other file extensions? The makers of AutoCAD software are pursuing trade-mark protection over the file extension .dwg (referring to “drawing”), which is the file format for the AutoCAD software product...

Canada to Fast-Track CleanTech Patents

Posted on May 19, 2010
Today, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) announced that it is developing a protocol to expedite the examination of patent applications related to “green technology”. Proposed amendments to the Patent Rules would be published for comment in the Fall of 2010, meaning that the fast-track program would not likely take effect until late 2010 or early 2011...

Patent Strategy: i4i and Microsoft

Posted on May 17, 2010
Patent enforcement and defence strategy often involves a coordinated approach, including patent infringement litigation, patent reexamination before the USPTO, and complaints filed with the International Trade Commission, a U.S. trade panel that can ban importation of infringing goods...

Outsourcing Your Email to Google? Privacy Laws Apply

Posted on May 12, 2010
Planning on outsourcing your company’s email to Gmail? Or maybe you’re outsourcing your data storage to a server in the US? Recent changes to Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) stipulate that organizations must notify people when they will be transferring personal information to a service provider outside of Canada...

Industrial Design in Canada & US

Posted on May 10, 2010
Industrial design is often overlooked while its flashier cousins - patents, copyright and trade-marks - hog the spotlight. In both Canada (which uses the term industrial design) and the US (which refers to a design patent), this category of intellectual property only provides protection for ornamental and not functional aspects of the design of the [...

Slide to Unlock: Apple?s Trade Secrets (Part 2)

Posted on May 04, 2010
You may have seen our recent post on the subject of Apple’s robust trade-secret protection program. Apple grabbed headlines again when a prototype iPhone made its way into the hands of a blogger at Gizmodo, who promptly posted a review of it. It didn’t take long for Apple to flex its trade-secret enforcement tools...

ACTA & Copyright Reform in Canada

Posted on April 26, 2010
What does an international treaty have to do with ripping songs to your iPod? You may not have heard much about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), but this international treaty may have significant impacts on the domestic copyright reform process in Canada...

Can you be anonymous online in Canada?

Posted on April 20, 2010
If someone engages in online defamation, online copyright infringement or any number of other illegal acts on the internet, the first question is who is actually committing the act in question? One of the main issues facing litigants in Canada is the identity of anonymous actors who are shielded by mysterious usernames, aliases or cryptic email addresses...

Brownlee Among Top Firms in Western Canada

Posted on April 16, 2010
This is not an update on intellectual property law, but hey, it’s worth mentioning: Brownlee LLP has been ranked by Canadian Lawyer Magazine as one of the Top 10 law firms in Western Canada. Calgary - 07:00 MST

Patent Marking: Update for Canadian Patent Owners

Posted on April 12, 2010
Do you have a patent in the US or are you a licensee of a US patent? Are your products marked correctly? Canadian patent owners should review patent marking requirements in the US, in light of the recent Forest Group decision (Forest Group, Inc. v. Bon Tool Co...

Open Source Software Licensing

Posted on April 08, 2010
Regardless of what you are distributing - shrink-wrapped CDs, online applications or smartphone apps - software licensing takes on an added layer of complexity when open source software issues are part of the mix. The law in the US has been clarified thanks to the Jacobsen v...

Use of Likeness in Video Games

Posted on March 23, 2010
Former basketball star Ed O’Bannon and former quarterback Sam Keller have now joined forces in a multimillion-dollar federal class action lawsuit that is proceeding in the US against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The lawsuit has been joined by 15 former NCAA basketball and football athletes...

Business Method Patents: Amazon Clicks Through

Posted on March 19, 2010
Many companies in Canada and the US are waiting for clarity on the software and business-method patent debate. In the US, we’re watching the proposed Patent Reform Act of 2010, A ruling from the US Supreme Court is expected on the Bilski appeal ; In Canada, we’re waiting for the decision in the Federal Court Appeal of the Patent Appeal [...

Google AdWords: Can?t Beat ?Em?

Posted on March 16, 2010
Google generates serious revenue ($20 billion+) from its AdWords program and “Keyword Suggestion Tool”. Yahoo! has its equivalent Sponsored Search service, and so does Microsoft through Bing Search Advertising. All of these internet advertising services allow advertisiers to buy “keywords” to appear in online ads within sponsored search results...

IP Infringement & Director Liability

Posted on March 07, 2010
A popular Chinese night market in a suburb of Vancouver became the arena for an intellectual property infringement case involving trade-marks and copyright. In a recent Federal Court decision (Target Event Production Ltd. v. Cheung and Lions Communications Inc...

Internationalized Domain Names - Part 2

Posted on March 01, 2010
In late 2009, ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) announced plans to implement internationalized country-code top-level domain names (ccTLDs) using non-Latin characters. See our previous post: Internationalized Domain Names...

US Jursidiction over Canadian Sites

Posted on February 26, 2010
Does a US judge have jurisdiction over a website operated in Canada? The answer is found in a recent US court decision involving a Canadian website operator (Columbia Pictures Industries Inc. v. Fung ). In that case, the Motion Pictures Association of America sued Gary Fung, operator of IsoHunt (a popular BitTorrent site)...

Mortal Copyright Kombat: Is there Copyright in Choreography?

Posted on February 12, 2010
A game developer incorporates martial arts moves into a new video game. Is the choreography of those moves protectable by copyright? The answer is, apparently, yes. The 1997 decision in Ahn v. Midway Manufacturing Co., 965 F. Supp. 1134 (N.D. Ill. 1997) decided that under US law, certain martial arts routines fell within the subject matter of copyright...

Copyright Infringement Across Borders

Posted on February 10, 2010
Copyright protects a range of creative works - photographs, images, software, books and music, to name a few. And copyright law is considered to be “territorial” - this means that Canadian copyright law deals with protection and enforcement within Canada...

Trade-marks for Small Business

Posted on February 05, 2010
Calling all small business owners. Remember that nagging feeling that you should get a handle on your brands and trade-marks? Here’s a local cautionary tale that illustrates why trade-marks are critical for small business. A popular chain of Calgary eateries has been trading under the name NELLIE’S for years...

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