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Connecting Canadians, Empowering Inclusive Innovation

Connecting Canadians, Empowering Inclusive Innovation

Innovation is, once again, a topic of great concern for Canadian policy makers and the commentariat. And for good reason. Yet, at a time when (mainly foreign) companies – notably Alphabet (Google), Apple, Tesla, Amazon, and Facebook – are lauded as being the ‘world’s most innovative’ (for example, see FastCompany and the Boston Consulting Group) […]

Money Talk(s) and Competition Conflict: The CTS17 Regulatory Blockbuster

Money Talk(s) and Competition Conflict: The CTS17 Regulatory Blockbuster

Earlier this month, I attended the 2017 Canadian Telecom Summit and covered the Regulatory Blockbuster panel. The Regulatory Blockbuster is an annual event where regulatory representatives from telecom companies (this year, TELUS, Rogers, Bell, and TekSavvy) and other representative stakeholders (this year featured the Public Interest Advocacy Centre) debate regulation, pricing, and future challenges to […]

What’s Innovative About Cryptocurrency and Hayek’s “Free Market Money”? — Some Understated Obstacles in the Race for Blockchain Patents

What’s Innovative About Cryptocurrency and Hayek’s “Free Market Money”? — Some Understated Obstacles in the Race for Blockchain Patents

If we are going to be fair, the cryptocurrency idea dates back to almost forty years ago. In an article published in the Wall Street Journal on August 19, 1977, Friedrich Hayek — the economist and philosopher whose work on a theory of money earned him a Nobel Prize — anticipated that many different types […]

Disruptive Innovation and Digital Integration

Disruptive Innovation and Digital Integration

Despite persistent fears of a surveillance state and artificial intelligence, the smart device market continues to expand with little chance of collapse. Accordingly, some of the sessions at the 2017 Canadian Telecom Summit (CTS17) focussed on how the telecommunications industry players in Canada are adapting to the rapid evolution of interconnected devices and an increasing […]

Privacy by Default: A Privacy and Cyber-security imperative in the IoT and Big-Data Age

Privacy by Default: A Privacy and Cyber-security imperative in the IoT and Big-Data Age

The rapid growth of big data technologies and Internet of Things (IoT) devices mandates the modernization of the Canadian privacy legislation, which establishes protection from both private companies and government agencies. The necessity of the upcoming reforms to the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and the Privacy Act was illustrated during […]

#ISHTIP 2017 - Intellectual Property as Circulation and Control

#ISHTIP 2017 - Intellectual Property as Circulation and Control

The International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP) will be holding its annual workshop in Toronto, July 12th-14th, 2017. Organized by the Centre for Innovation law and Policy at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law, and co-sponsored in part by Osgoode Hall Law School and IP Osgoode, the workshop will […]