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Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

Wishing you happy holidays and a creative and innovative new year!  We appreciate your interest and support over the past year and look forward to another successful year.  We will slow down over the holiday period and, after a short break, return in the new year with our IP year in review blog and the […]

Branding Names: from Air Jordan to Linsanity and Trump Toilets

Branding Names: from Air Jordan to Linsanity and Trump Toilets

2016 was a winning year for Western trademarks in China. It produced an unprecedented number of decisions – two, to be exact – in which China won praise for protecting foreign trademarks, affirming intellectual property rights, and developing a friendlier environment for international businesses. The only loser was trademark law itself, as the two decisions […]

Examining Ambiguities in Patent Examination Guidelines by Dr. Siva Thambisetty

Examining Ambiguities in Patent Examination Guidelines by Dr. Siva Thambisetty

As part of the IP Osgoode Speaks Series, Dr. Siva Thambisetty, an associate professor of law at the London School of Economics, visited Osgoode Hall Law School to speak on the subject of patent dialect. The main focus of her talk, entitled, "Is Patent Law Evasive or Merely Elusive?", was to highlight the issue of […]

Bringing Biologics in from the Cold: Does Canada’s IP Regime Need a Booster?

Bringing Biologics in from the Cold: Does Canada’s IP Regime Need a Booster?

As ratification stutters for the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the much-maligned free-trade deal between Canada and the European Union, debate continues as to whether the Canadian intellectual property (IP) regime will provide adequate protection for innovative biologic medicines in relation to subsequent-entry biologics (SEBs). Biologic medicines are complex molecules derived from living organisms […]

Patenting the Online Peer Review Process?

Patenting the Online Peer Review Process?

Yes, it is apparently possible – Elsevier just did it. Elsevier is one of the largest science and medical publishers in the world. Prestigious journals, such as Cell and The Lancet, are amongst its products. Over the years, it has been the subject of a number of criticisms, including its pricing regime (see here, here […]

Professors and Leading Scholars Respond to the IPO's Request for Views on Modernising the European Copyright Framework

Professors and Leading Scholars Respond to the IPO's Request for Views on Modernising the European Copyright Framework

On September 14, the European Commission published draft legislation aimed at modernising the European copyright framework.  To ensure the draft legislation delivers the best outcomes for all those affected by it, the Intellectual Property Office made a call for views on the costs and benefits of the proposed measures, and suggestions for how the language […]

(Ir)Rational Choice Theory: Prof. Chris Buccafusco’s Search for the Biases of Creativity

(Ir)Rational Choice Theory: Prof. Chris Buccafusco’s Search for the Biases of Creativity

What happens when intellectual property law collides with the social sciences? They meld together for some fascinating experiments. In a lecture given at Osgoode Hall Law School as part of the IP Osgoode Speaks Series, Prof. Chris Buccafusco described three such experiments performed by him and his team.[1]  Specifically, their research seeks to develop an […]

Utility Emphasis Lacking in the Examination of Aggregations

Utility Emphasis Lacking in the Examination of Aggregations

The distinction between combinations and aggregations is a well-accepted principle of patent law. A combination is an assemblage of known elements whose combined use leads to a result that is different from the sum of the results of the individual elements. Whereas, an aggregation is an assemblage of elements that each produce their expected result […]