Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. The modern concept of intellectual property developed in England in the 17th and 18th centuries. The term "intellectual property" began to be used in the 19th century, though it was not until the late 20th century that intellectual property became commonplace in most of the world's legal systems.
Osgoode Hall Law School, commonly shortened to Osgoode, is the law school of York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The copyright law of Canada governs the legally enforceable rights to creative and artistic works under the laws of Canada. Canada passed its first colonial copyright statute in 1832 but was subject to imperial copyright law established by Britain until 1921. Current copyright law was established by the Copyright Act of Canada which was first passed in 1921 and substantially amended in 1988, 1997, and 2012. All powers to legislate copyright law are in the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Canada by virtue of section 91(23) of the Constitution Act, 1867.
The Copyright Act of Canada is the federal statute governing copyright law in Canada. It is jointly administered by the Department of Industry Canada and the Department of Canadian Heritage. The Copyright Act was first passed in 1921 and substantially amended in 1988 and 1997. Several attempts were made between 2005 and 2011 to amend the Act, but each of the bills failed to pass due to political opposition. In 2011, with a majority in the House of Commons, the Conservative Party introduced Bill C-11, titled the Copyright Modernization Act. Bill C-11 was passed and received Royal Assent on June 29, 2012.
Michael Allen Geist is a Canadian academic, the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa and a member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society. Geist was educated at the University of Western Ontario, Osgoode Hall Law School, where he received his Bachelor of Laws, Cambridge University, where he received a Master of Laws, and Columbia Law School, where he received a Master of Laws and Doctor of Law degree. He has been a visiting professor at universities around the world including the University of Haifa, Hong Kong University, and Tel Aviv University. He is also a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.
The threshold of originality is a concept in copyright law that is used to assess whether a particular work can be copyrighted. It is used to distinguish works that are sufficiently original to warrant copyright protection from those that are not. In this context, "originality" refers to "coming from someone as the originator/author", rather than "never having occurred or existed before".
Jessica Litman is a leading intellectual property scholar. She has been ranked as one of the most-cited U.S. law professors in the field of intellectual property/cyberlaw.
Carole Enid Handler is an American lawyer who specializes in intellectual property litigation in the areas of trademark, copyright and antitrust laws, particularly those related to entertainment and media industry. She is commonly known as the "lawyer who saved Spider-Man."
The philosophy of copyright considers philosophical issues linked to copyright policy, and other jurisprudential problems that arise in legal systems' interpretation and application of copyright law.
Mary Wong is the vice president for strategic community operations, planning & engagement at ICANN. Prior to taking up a full-time position with ICANN, she was the founding director of the Franklin Pierce Center for Intellectual Property and a tenured professor at the University of New Hampshire in Concord, New Hampshire, U.S.A.
Carla Meninsky is a former video game designer and programmer active during the early years of the Atari VCS. Along with Carol Shaw, Meninsky was one of three female engineers at Atari, Inc. to develop video game cartridges. She later became an intellectual property lawyer.
Moral rights in United Kingdom law are parts of copyright law that protect the personal interests of the author of a copyrighted work, as well as the economic interests protected by other elements of copyright. Found in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the moral rights are the right to be identified as the author of a work, known as the right of paternity, the right to object to derogatory treatment of a work, known as the right of integrity, the right not to be identified as the author of someone else's work, and the right to privacy. The right of paternity exists for the entire copyright term, and requires individuals who commercially broadcast, sell, perform or exhibit literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works to identify the author of the work – but this does not apply to things such as typefaces, encyclopaedias or works subject to crown copyright.
In Canada, the Copyright Act provides a monopoly right to owners of copyrighted works. This implies no person can use the work without authorization or consent from the copyright owner. However, certain exceptions in the Act govern circumstances where a work will not be held to have been infringed.
"Authorization" and "Secondary Infringement" are two instances of "indirect infringement" in Canadian Copyright law. In cases of indirect infringement, individuals can be held liable for infringement even where they did not personally make copies of the copyrighted subject-matter. This expands the scope of liability. The Canadian courts have dealt with these concepts in a number of cases, several of which will be elaborated upon below.
Canadian intellectual property law governs the regulation of the exploitation of intellectual property in Canada. Creators of intellectual property gain rights either by statute or by the common law. Intellectual property is governed both by provincial and federal jurisdiction, although most legislation and judicial activity occur at the federal level.
In Canadian patent law, only “inventions” are patentable. Under the Patent Act, only certain categories of things may be considered and defined as inventions. Therefore, if a patent discloses an item that fulfills the requirements of novelty, non-obviousness and utility, it may nonetheless be found invalid on the grounds that it does not fall within one of the statutory categories of “invention”. Since the Patent Act, the categories of patentable subject matter have been defined and interpreted by Canadian courts.
Collection administration of copyrights describes the use in Canadian law of collective societies to manage licenses for copyrighted material belonging to more than one copyright owner. These collective societies are responsible for granting permission to use the works they manage and setting out what conditions users of their works must follow. Examples of collective societies in Canada include: Christian Video Licensing International and the Canadian Broadcasters Rights Agency
A collective work is a work that contains the works of several authors assembled and published under the direction of one natural or legal person who owns the copyright in the work as a whole. Definitions vary considerably from one country to another, but usually treat ownership of the work as a whole as distinct from ownership of the individual contributions, so the individual authors may retain the right to publish their work elsewhere. It is common for publication of articles on the Internet, when isolated from the context of the overall work, to be considered to be outside of the standard agreement between the author and the owner of the collective work.
Harold George Fox, was a Canadian lawyer, scholar, and businessman. He was widely known for his texts on Canadian intellectual property law, litigation, and for his involvement in the zipper business.
David Vaver is a lawyer and legal scholar in the field of intellectual property law. He is a professor of law at Osgoode Hall Law School as well as Emeritus Professor of Intellectual Property & Information Technology Law at the University of Oxford, Emeritus Fellow of St. Peter's College, Oxford and former director of the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre.
