I recently attended a lecture by professor Bruce Ziff, of the University of Alberta Law School, where he described what he termed as his only original academic idea. He posited…
Category: Infringement
The Battle over the Rights to “Zombies in a Mall”
When asked to think about the pop-culture zombie genre, classics such as George A. Romero’s 1979 film “Dawn of the Dead” (and its 2004 remake) and Peter Jackson’s 1992 creation…
All Mixed Up: Scrabulous and the Realpolitik of IP
In 2005, two brothers in Kolkata, India launched Scrabulous, an online implementation of the board game Scrabble. With a few thousand regular players, it wasn’t about to replace World of…
Music Previews: Should Use of a Marketing Tool be Considered Fair Dealing for the Purpose of Research?
In October 2007, the Copyright Board of Canada rendered a decision regarding tariffs payable to SOCAN by online music services.[1] As part of the Board’s decision it concluded that music…
Verizon Communications, Inc. v. Vonage Holdings Corp: a Victory for Vonage or a Retreat by the Courts?
In March 2007, the district court in Alexandria, Virginia held that Vonage, a company which uses voice over IP technology, had infringed claims of three patents owned by Verizon Communications,…
French student arrested for posting non-authorized copies of Harry Potter
Being an enthusiastic fan of J.K Rowling’s Potter novels I was infuriated to hear the French student arrested for publishing his own translation of the seventh chapter of the Potter…