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I had the pleasure of speaking yesterday at the Law Society of Upper Canada 20th Annual IP Law: The Year in Review. I spoke on the topic of Copyright and Technological Neutrality: CBC v SODRAC. My slides are shown below and can be downloaded here.
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The Supreme Court released a landmark judgment yesterday in the closely watched case, Canadian Broadcasting Corp. v. SODRAC 2003 Inc., 2015 SCC 57. The 7-2 judgment of the Court was delivered by Rothstein J (with whom McLachlin C.J., Cromwell, Moldaver, Wagner, Gascon and Côté JJ agreed).
The judgment established the following principles.
Broadcast‑incidental copying engages the reproduction right. While balance between user and right‑holder interests and technological neutrality are important principles under Canadian copyright law, they are interpretive principles which do not trump, and cannot change, the express terms of the Act.…
Last month, Robert Thomson, the CEO of News Corp., gave a keynote address at the 2015 Lowy Institute Media Awards dinner.
He spent a good part of that speech addressing challenges to the creative industries, and to media companies in particular, posed by powerful distribution channels – what he labels “distributionists” – such as Google.
…None of them actually create content, and they certainly have little intention of paying for it, but they do redistribute the content created by others – they would argue that such redistribution is a natural extension of their role as social networks.
On Wednesday, the government announced an extension of the term of protection for performers and makers of sound recordings, increasing the term from 50 years to 70 years. The announcement was widely applauded by Canadian artists, such as Randy Bachman, Bruce Cockburn, Leonard Cohen, Cowboy Junkies, Jim Cuddy (Blue Rodeo), Kardinal Offishall, Serena Ryder, Tom Cochrane, Gordon Lightfoot, Loreena McKennitt, and Triumph, and by organizations representing artists and makers of sound recordings, including the Canadian Independent Music Association (CIMA), Music Canada, and the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA).…
The Canadian Government announced today that it is amending the Copyright Act to extend the term of protection for performers and makers of sound recordings from its current term of 50 years to 70 years. The announcement, which also included a statement that Canada intends to accede to the Marrakesh Treaty for the blind and visually impaired, was made as part of the Government’s Budget and is expected to be enacted as part of a budget implementation bill to be tabled in Parliament within the next few days.…
The Canadian Government announced today that it is making amendments to the Copyright Act to enable Canada to accede to the Marrakesh Treaty and to extend the term of copyright protection for performers and makers of sound recordings from 50 to 70 years. The announcement was made as part of the Government’s Budget and is expected to be enacted as part of a budget implementation bill to be tabled in Parliament within the next few days.
The Budget described the Government’s intentions in relation to the Marrakesh Treaty as follows:
…The Government will propose amendments to the Copyright Act to implement and accede to the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled.
In Club Resorts Ltd. v Van Breda, 2012 SCC 17, the Supreme Court clarified the rules for when a Canadian court can assume jurisdiction over a claim against a party located outside the jurisdiction. Specifically, it clarified the rules for applying the real and substantial test to determining if there is a sufficient connection between the subject matter of the action and the jurisdiction for determining jurisdiction simpliciter. The Van Breda case did not, however, address how that test would apply to cases involving infringement of copyright.…
On January 22, I gave a talk at the Law Society of Upper Canada’s 19th Annual Intellectual Property Law: The Year in Review program. My talk canvassed developments in copyright in 2014. I previously published a paper that summarizes leading cases from Canada, the United States, elsewhere in the Commonwealth and the European Union called Copyright law 2014: the year in review and is available at the link on my blog.
My slides from the LSUC talk are reproduced below and summarize the following cases:
Canada
…As the creative industries continued to grow economically in importance in 2014, so have the stakes in copyright litigation. Increasingly, the courts have been challenged to resolve complex disputes arising from new uses of works and other subject matter brought about by innovations in technology. While content is often a core and indispensable element of new and innovative services, products or offerings, frequently parties dispute whether the use requires permission and payment to rights holders or can be engaged in without permission or payment.…
Blocking orders against web sites and services that engage in or enable copyright infringement are common in the European Union. BitTorrent sites like The Pirate Bay are a frequent target of such orders. See, Keeping The Pirate Bays at Bay: using blocking orders to curtail infringements; Blocking orders against ISPs legal in the EU: UPC Telekabel Wien.
There have been a recent series of such orders in the EU. In October 2014, a UK court issued a blocking order against a series of BitTorrent sites in 1967 Ltd & Ors v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd & Ors [2014] EWHC 3444 (Ch) (23 October 2014).…
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