The Supreme Court of Canada released an important ruling today on the role of technological neutrality in copyright law. In a 7-2 split decision in Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Société Radio-Canada v. SODRAC 2003 Inc., et al., Justice Rothstein writing for the majority affirmed the principle of technological neutrality and held that royalties must be paid for ephemeral copies of works made by broadcasters for the purpose of facilitating broadcasting. However the majority also remanded a determination of the value of the licenses for those copyrights to the Copyright Board in order to take into account technological neutrality. A strong dissent by Justice Abella (agreed to in part by Justice Karakatsanis) disagreed that copyright applied to ephemeral copies, at all.
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Monthly Archives: November 2015
TPP
Last week, the official text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership was posted, including the chapter on Intellectual Property and various related side instruments. The new Liberal government has said it will review the agreement and have consultations.
Double Patenting
Double patenting arose to deal with ‘evergreening’ of patent rights. I discuss the application of double patenting with ‘New Act’ patents in my latest column for Slaw.
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