Home » 2010 » April

To License or Not to License?

To License or Not to License?

Virgil Cojocaru is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. In a recent paper, Michael Jacobs and Alan Devlin discuss the debate in forcing monopolists to license their IP. By licensing their IP, monopolists would increase market innovation and create a competitive environment. However, these advantages come with a significant drawback. They can decrease the […]

Canadian Researchers Reveal the Shadowy Side of Cyber-Espionage

Canadian Researchers Reveal the Shadowy Side of Cyber-Espionage

Stuart Freen is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. Earlier this month a joint team of researchers from the Information Warfare Monitor and the Shadowserver Foundation released a new report entitled Shadows in the Cloud. The report details a complex cyber-espionage network operating out of China which has compromised computers and stolen hundreds […]

Biobank Governance, Privacy, and Informed Consent

Biobank Governance, Privacy, and Informed Consent

Trudo Lemmens is Associate Professor at the Faculties of Law and Medicine of the University of Toronto, and a member of the Joint Centre for Bioethics and the Centre for Ethics. Medical research is increasingly relying on biobanks, large repositories of human biological material and related health information. These can be best conceived as elaborate […]

Cindy, Incidentally – The "Incidental Inclusion" Exception in Canadian Copyright Law

Cindy, Incidentally – The "Incidental Inclusion" Exception in Canadian Copyright Law

Bob Tarantino is a lawyer in the Entertainment Law Group of Heenan Blaikie LLP. He holds graduate degrees in law from Osgoode Hall Law School and the University of Oxford. A filmmaker films an individual walking down a city street, past a convenience store.  The camera captures, among others, two things: an advertisement consisting of […]

A Good Ad is Hard to Find…Especially One that is Non-infringing

A Good Ad is Hard to Find…Especially One that is Non-infringing

Brandon Evenson is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. Most advertisements are disappointing. They suffer from gimmicky jingles, exaggerated punchlines, and fake endorsements. Yet every once-in-a-while there comes an ad that is witty, sophisticated, and original. Such an ad, more often than not, parodies popular culture.  But what happens when the ad runs […]

OpenCourseWare program sees rise and makes rapid strides for free education online

OpenCourseWare program sees rise and makes rapid strides for free education online

Nirav Bhatt is an LLM candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. The much deliberated topic of making education easily accessible and available for no cost is indeed coming closer to reality, with a huge increase in the number of students using OpenCourseWare. With institutions like Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, and M.I.T making learning materials easily accessible online, there is a great […]

Virtual Virtuosity: Or the Difficulty of Distinguishing Masterpieces from Masterworks

Virtual Virtuosity: Or the Difficulty of Distinguishing Masterpieces from Masterworks

Roger S. Fisher, Ph.D., J.D. teaches courses at York University on law, humanities and copyright policy. He is a member of the Bar of Ontario and is currently working on a project entitled “Antigone Rests Her Case: Law, Legal Discourses and Discourse Shifting in Sophocles’ Antigone.”  The law has always had an uneasy relationship with […]

Noises Heard: Canada's Recent Online Copyright Consultation Process -- Teachings and Cautions

Noises Heard: Canada's Recent Online Copyright Consultation Process -- Teachings and Cautions

Richard Owens is counsel in a Toronto law firm specializing in business and commercial law, intellectual property and technology. This short comment analyses the results of the Government of Canada’s recent on-line public consultation on its planned reform of copyright laws, held from July 20th, 2009 to September 15th, 2009.  Defects in the Consultation process […]

Tiffany and Co. loses appeal against eBay

Tiffany and Co. loses appeal against eBay

George Nathanael is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. On April 1st the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided in favour of eBay (for the most part) in their case against Tiffany and Company. The case revolved around the advertisements that eBay had placed for Tiffany jewellery being sold on […]