Bill C-56, the “Combating Counterfeit Products Act”, went through its first reading on March 1st 2013. The primary goal of the bill, from the perspective of the government, is to modernize our infringement legislation in order to better protect consumers and businesses from counterfeit goods.
While North American IP enthusiasts had likely been pre-occupied with the controversy surrounding the stalled American anti-internet piracy bills known as SOPA and PIPA (covered by IP Osgoode here), Europe has been struggling to deal with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Even though it was designed to be an international framework for improved intellectual property […]
In the past few years, policymakers, academic commentators, consumer advocates, civil liberties groups, and user communities have expressed grave concerns about the steadily increasing levels of enforcement of intellectual property rights. Many of these concerns relate to the “alphabet soup” of transborder intellectual property enforcement, which consists of the following: SECURE (Standards to Be Employed […]
It must have been really nice to have worked as an IP expert for the US Trade Representative (USTR) during the 1990s. Almost everything they proposed would become law. The global maximalist agenda had the large international institutions on its side. The golden age of international maximalism saw the creation of the WTO, the TRIPS […]
Nathan Fan is a JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. The world’s leading countries gathered again this year in Seoul, Korea for the sixth negotiation meeting for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). For those who do not yet know about ACTA, the negotiations are intended to culminate in a multi-lateral trade agreement that will assist […]