Category: Intellectual Property

Respect and Reality are Keys to Copyright Reform

Copyright can be a polarizing topic, caricatured with imagery of toiling creators and freeloading pirates. The latest line is that Canada’s laws are hopelessly antiquated and can’t possibly cope with new cultural or technological phenomena. This kind of talk may produce headlines and a quick batch of legal reforms, but it does nothing to constructively facilitate intelligent policymaking. That requires a more nuanced point of view.

Who Really Owns the Stanley Cup?

As most of you remember, there was one year where the Stanley Cup was not awarded because of a labour dispute between the National Hockey League and its players.  This dispute resulted in the 2004-2005 lockout, as well as a lawsuit over the ownership of the Stanley Cup. The dispute over ownership of the Stanley […]

How Digital Rights Management Backfired on Sony BMG Music

When Sony BMG snuck restrictive contractual terms and digital rights management technologies onto tens of millions of CDs in 2006, the strategy backfired by alienating consumers as well as artists and leading to class action litigation against the company. My article explains, “How Restrictive Terms and Technologies Backfired on Sony BMG Music.” I argue that […]

Genetic Information Technologies, Property Rights and Tort Liabilities

At the IT.CAN Annual Conference in Montreal in October 2005 I presented my research drawing parallels between digital rights management technologies used in the context of information communications technologies, and genetic use restriction technologies used to control biotechnologies.

How to Compensate Artists for Private Copying

My work on the topic of artist compensation in Canada was presented to the Uniform Law Conference of Canada’s annual meeting in St. John’s, Canada in August 2005. The ideas presented were incorporated into an article on the role of levies in Canada’s digital music marketplace, published in the Canadian Journal of Law and Technology.