Intellectual Property
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July 31, 2024
New partner and IP expert at Blakes
Fiona Legere has joined Blakes as a partner and leader of the firm’s intellectual property litigation practice.
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July 30, 2024
Federal Court reinstates trademark based on new evidence of sales in Canada
The Federal Court has overturned an administrative decision expunging a registered trademark based on evidence filed on appeal that established that the owner of the mark was the first link in the chain of distribution of third-party sales of the relevant products in Canada.
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July 30, 2024
Counsel contend Ottawa’s spate of judicial appointments might make novel constitutional appeal moot
Lawyers who won a groundbreaking Federal Court declaration that recognized a “constitutional convention that judicial vacancies on the provincial superior courts and federal courts must be filled within a reasonable time” contend Ottawa’s appeal should be dismissed as moot if the Trudeau government gets federal judicial vacancies down to the reasonable level set by Federal Court Justice Henry Brown last February.
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July 29, 2024
Recent copyright developments: Eye-appealing features applied to useful articles
Based on statements and debates from around the time that subsection 64(2) was introduced into the Copyright Act, the broad purpose of the provision was to limit the scope of copyright and moral rights for designs applied to certain products reproduced in industrial quantities. The general idea was that such designs should instead be protected by registration of an industrial design, which has a much shorter life than copyright.
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July 26, 2024
Recent copyright developments: Too early to draw adverse inference
Voltage Holdings, LLC has been trying to assert claims against a mass group of Internet subscribers who used or authorized the use of the BitTorrent peer-to-peer network to unlawfully make the plaintiff’s film available for distribution. The plaintiff unsuccessfully sought default judgment in its action in the Federal Court.
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July 25, 2024
An overview of Canada’s new Digital Services Tax Act
On June 20, 2024, Bill C-59 received royal assent, establishing Canada’s new Digital Services Tax Act (DST Act). However, it was stipulated, through Bill C-59, that the Act would only come into force on a date determined by order of the Governor in Council.
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July 24, 2024
Duty of tech competence, AI adoption by lawyers | Connie L. Braun and Juliana Saxberg
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has dominated legal tech conversations for several years, and for good reason. Widespread consumer adoption of ChatGPT and other generative AI products has delivered a host of unprecedented legal and tech risks to Canadian entities. Governments and regulators in Canada and abroad continue to scramble to regulate the responsible use of AI tools, even though their use is already thoroughly embedded in Canadian and global business, government and legal system operations. As a result, the typical Canadian entity’s AI compliance dossier is an unfinished patchwork of aspirational codes and aging regulatory instruments that were designed when Y2K was considered a big enterprise tech risk.
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July 24, 2024
New managing partner for Aird & Berlis
Jill P. Fraser, a senior partner in Aird & Berlis’s financial services group and a long-standing member of the executive committee, the firm’s new managing partner.
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July 23, 2024
Federal Court orders broadcaster to pay $27.3M for copyright infringement of Turkish programs
The Federal Court has ordered a broadcaster to pay $27.3 million for infringing the copyrights of Turkish broadcaster Kanal D on 2,729 episodes of 22 television programs.
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July 22, 2024
Competition watchdog gives guidance, seeks input on policing deceptive ‘greenwashing’ by business
The federal Competition Bureau is asking for input from lawyers, their clients and the public to inform the bureau's “future enforcement guidance” regarding misleading and unsubstantiated environmental claims by businesses about products or activities, including future enforcement guidance with respect to last month’s amendments to the Competition Act that explicitly address “greenwashing.”