IP Year in Review 2018 – A Milestone Year for IP Osgoode and Ground-breaking Changes in the Canadian IP landscape

As we settle into 2019, we look forward to topping the successes of the last year! Ten years ago IP Osgoode, Osgoode’s flagship Intellectual Property Law and Technology Program, was launched with the dream of creating a vibrant community to engage in balanced and objective research, and offer new and unexplored viewpoints to public policy […]

IP Intensive: The Purview of Industrial Policy – Ruminations from Selected INDU Committee Meetings - A Semester at ISED

At law school, policy is often a background discussion – something left to private chats with professors or fellow students as a creature of curiosity. However, at Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada (ISED), I was challenged to rethink my perspective on popular legal concepts and consider how the law ought to serve Canadians. During […]

Broken Promises: Utility Standards and Patent Applications in Canada

The last day of June 2017 saw the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) quash the controversial Promise Doctrine. The issue at hand in AstraZeneca Canada Inc v Apotex Inc was whether the Promise Doctrine should be held as the correct standard of utility under the Patent Act. The SCC’s ruling finds the Promise Doctrine unsound […]

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 […]

How Open Science and Copyleft Can Help Find Cures

In promoting scientific research and discovery, access to information is everything. Scientists look to journals and the work of their peers to identify new, innovative laboratory methods or trends in scientific discovery. However, maintaining intellectual property rights in one’s work is often needed to support the living expenses of scientists. So, when Dr. Guy Rouleau […]

What Makes It My Molecule: A Look at Professor Ronald Pearlman’s Genome Editing Work

This past November, Professor Ronald E. Pearlman from York University’s Department of Biology gave a talk [1] at Osgoode Hall Law School to discuss the potential of the innovative CRISPR genome editing system. Central to the talk was the evolving nature of genome editing technology and the ethical concerns that come with its growing breadth of […]

The Price for Pokemon - How Much Are Childhood Icons Worth Protecting?

The Value of the Pokémon Franchise If you were born in the late 1980s or early 90s or have young children, you have probably encountered a red-cheeked mouse called Pikachu or any of the hundreds of other Pokémon that exist in the Pokémon media franchise. While the premise of catching colourful creatures is rather straightforward, […]