UK Archives

Copyright law 2014: the year in review

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.…

View Post

Copyright law 2013: the year in review

Yesterday, I gave a talk at the Law Society of Upper Canada’s 18h Annual Intellectual Property Law: The Year in Review program. My talk canvassed developments in copyright in Canada, the US and UK in 2013. My slides are shown below. The associated paper prepared in collaboration with Glen Bloom, with the help of others, is available here.

The following copyright cases from Canada, the USA, and UK are dealt with in the slides. The paper has additional Canadian cases.

CANADA

(AOM ) NA Inc.

…

View Post

Streaming websites blocked in UK: Paramount v Sky

The England High Court recently made an order requiring ISPs to block two linking websites located at http://www.solarmovie.so (“SolarMovie”) and http://www.tubeplus.me (“TubePlus”). In doing so, the court in Paramount Home Entertainment International Ltd & Ors v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd & Ors [2013] EWHC 3479 (Ch) (13 November 2013) ruled that the sites, which did not themselves host any content, were nevertheless liable for infringement because they facilitated streaming of content to users by hosting and organizing hyperlinks to the content without consent of copyright owners.…

View Post

Copyright law 2012: the year in review in Canada and around the world

Yesterday, I gave a talk at the Law Society of Upper Canada’s 17h Annual Intellectual Property Law: The Year in Review program. My talk canvassed developments in copyright in Canada and around the world in 2012. My slides are shown below. The associated paper prepared in collaboration with Glen Bloom, with the help of others, is available here.

The following copyright cases from Canada, the USA, UK and Ireland, Australia, and Europe are dealt with in the paper and slides.…

View Post

best blogs

Most popular intellectual property and technology law blogs

One of the best ways to stay on top of IP/Tech legal developments is by subscribing to blogs. In the IP/Tech field, there are many very good ones to choose from. Justia’s BlawgSearch lists and ranks many of them. I subscribe to over 90. Over the holidays, and with the help of McCarthy Tetrault articling student Addison Cameron-Huff, I ranked them by popularity.

There is no perfect tool for conducting this type of evaluation. I relied on RSS subscriber counts using the RSS subscriber base of Google Reader, iGoogle and Google Desktop as a proxy.…

View Post

UK: “not practical” to adopt US fair use

The UK will not adopt US fair use. This was revealed in statements made by Baroness Wilcox, the UK Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Business, Innovation and Skills and John Alty, Chief Executive and Comptroller General, Intellectual Property Office, in testimony before the UK Business, Innovation and Skills Committee on November 15, 2011.

Here is a extract from the testimony.

Q219 Chair : At the time, there were assertions that companies such as Google would not start up in this country because of the UK copyright law.

…

View Post

UK to get even tougher with IP crime

Yesterday, the UK Government released a number of proposals to modernise the UK’s intellectual property laws. One of the reports is dedicated to outlining The UK IP Crime Strategy. The rational for the strategy is clear: counterfeiting and piracy are of concern both as a barrier to growth and because of the wider ills to which they have been linked, which include dangerous goods, online fraud and serious organised crime.

The report recognized that “The key technology for IP infringement is the internet.…

View Post

Subscribe