In response to the continuing disruption caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) has announced on March 27, 2020 a further extension for filing deadlines – all deadlines ending in the month of April 2020 will
In an unanimous ruling, the United States Supreme Court held that copyright owners cannot sue states for copyright infringement when states have copied or made use of their works without their consent. Sovereign immunity shields the states from any such
Please see our updated version of this article, published July 10, 2020.
We know you have a lot to think about and plan right now and over the next few weeks. You can rely on us to keep your intellectual
Given the many challenges faced by all businesses in dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) has advised that it will relax filing deadlines for the remainder of March 2020. This decision was first announced on
If your business discovered that its revenue covered only 70% of its costs, it would be time for a re-examination of operations, both in terms of revenues and costs. The Copyright Office has issued some rule changes affecting both.
New Fees
According to the U.S. Copyright Office’s notice in the February 19, 2020 Federal Register (85 Fed. Reg. 9374, 9375), historically, the fees collected by the Copyright Office covered only 60% of its costs, and, more recently, only 70% of its costs. It has announced a new fee schedule, which includes many higher fees, some lower or unchanged fees, and some new fees. The new fee schedule goes into effect on Friday, March 20, 2020.
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, refers to the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behaviour. Though it sounds like something out of a sci-fi film, the reality is that AI is quickly becoming a norm in our everyday lives, from the simple AI systems used to sort email inboxes, to complex AI systems known as “Generative Adversarial Networks” (GANs), which can be trained to autonomously produce new products without human input. This has resulted in a new type of intellectual property: AI-generated IP.
The Federal Court has recently issued an order compelling Internet service providers (ISPs) to block their customers from accessing pirate subscription streaming sites operated by anonymous defendants. Although Bell Media Inc. v. GoldTV.Biz, 2019 FC 1432 is the first
In a symbolic win for Indigenous artists, the Federal Court of Australia has recently ordered a seller of fake Indigenous-style souvenirs to pay AU$2.3 million in pecuniary penalties for contraventions of the misleading and deceptive conduct provisions of the Australian
In the age of the internet, music videos have persisted on MTV and numerous other television outlets although they have to an extent been challenged by other forms of high-brow entertainment available. Many of them involve house inspections or the
On May 23, 2019, a federal jury unanimously found that the Houston Independent School District willfully infringed 36 of DynaStudy’s copyrighted study guides, and awarded $9.2 million dollars. (DynaStudy, Inc. v. Houston Independent School District, Case No. 4:16-cv-01442 (S.D. Tex. May 23, 2019) (verdict, document #316). As this case illustrates, “educational” use is a very narrow exception to the copyright laws. New technologies make copying easier than ever, but the jury verdict demonstrates the damages can be unlimited.