Wiseau Studio, LLC v Harper: Good News for Canadian Filmmakers on Fair Dealing and Documentaries

What Happened to Socrates

Law School Admission Council Demands Removal of Free LSAT Online Tutoring Videos

The 2020 Fox Intellectual Property Lecture: Global, Mandatory Fair Use

Randomly Generated Art Draws Copyright and Trademark Infringement Claims

When Adam Basanta created his art installation “All We’d Ever Need is One Another”, he wanted to explore technological automatization and the commercialization of art. But as he told the Globe and Mail, he never expected to explore these topics in a courtroom. Nor was he ecstatic to be served with a Statement of Claim. […]

Art from Fragments: A Legal Framework for the Growth of Canadian Hip-Hop and Digital Sampling

Digital audio sampling—a music production technique whereby sound-clips are extracted from songs and incorporated into new tracks via computer software—is a staple of hip-hop music. With the increased accessibility of Canadian music via apps like Spotify, coupled with the growing Canadian hip-hop music scene, there is great potential for the usage of Canadian musical samples […]

Fair Dealing: What Can Be (Fairly) Criticized?

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” That remark might be trite, especially in the era of selfies and Instagram, but a book is more than just words and a photograph is more than just ink– the sum of those parts will have meaning or will depict something beyond any constituent elements. When such a […]

Attacking the Attack Ads: Broadcasters Strike Back

Political attack ads are a Canadian electoral staple, compressing incriminating, damning and provoking footage into 30-second media bites. Typically, the subject matter is harvested from archived footage of the target captured under the media’s ever-watchful lens. Political parties have freely taken to exploiting news materials without the consent of originating news agencies. Broadcasters strongly condemn […]

Small Claims Court Makes Some Big Decisions about Fair Dealing and TPMs

In the recently released decision 1395804 Ontario Limited c.o.b. Blacklock’s Reporter v Canadian Vintners Association, the Ottawa small claims court ruled in an interesting way on fair dealing that might have some far-reaching implications if nothing overrules it. Reading a strict interpretation of CCH and the Copyright Act, deputy judge Lyon Gilbert reached the conclusion […]

Users’ Rights and Realities: CCH, Fair Dealing, and the Experiences at Canadian Cultural Institutions

Recent research is shining a new light onto the Supreme Court of Canada’s (SCC) decision that is said to have “reconceptualized” fair dealing as an integral part of copyright law in Canada (Craig, p. 449). During a 29 September 2014 lecture in the IPOsgoode Speaks Series, Dr. Emily Hudson, the Career Development Fellow in Intellectual Property Law at the Oxford […]