News

Benjamin Moore Case

Tuesday, August 15, 2023

On July 26, 2023, the Federal Court of Appeal decided the Benjamin Moore decision relating to computer implemented inventions. Please read my full comments in the Articles section of this website. I represented the Canadian Life and Health insurance Asssociation and Insurance Bureau of Canada as Intervener in the appeal.

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Fordham 2023

Friday, April 14, 2023

At the 30th Annual Intellectual Property Law Conference at Fordham I participated in a panel on "Plausibility, Enablement & Written Description with Speakers Carl Josefsson, Ute Kilger, John Richards and Amit H. Thakore and fellow panelists Trevor Cook and Laura Whiting, moderated by Brian Cordery..

Business Method Patents- Court of Appeal

Thursday, February 16, 2023

I intervened in the Federal Court of Appeal in the case of Benjamin Morre v. The Attorney General of Canada. I argued on behalf of The Canadian Health and LIfe Insurance Association and Insurance Bureau of Canada. The case concerned a new test that had been advanced by the Intelectual Property Institute in Canada and adopted by the trial division.  If confirmed, this new test would considerably expand the patenting of business methods and remove restrictions on such patents such as those that exist in other countries such as the US and the EU.

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Arbitrating IP Disputes in Times of Crisis

Wednesday, November 9, 2022

I participated as a panelist with Judge Faith Hochberg (ret) , Judge Barry Leon (ret)  and Justine  Ferland from the World Intellectual Property Organization, moderated by Marsha Cadogan. We discussed the unique issues surrounding the arbitration of IP cases. We discussed the advanatages of ad hoc vsersus admiinistered arbitration and use of the  WIPO arbitration centre. The event was sponsored by the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada. 

 

Rights in Raw Data

Tuesday, September 13, 2022

I participated in a panel session on the Law of Raw Data, as part of  the launch of a Wolters Kluwer book where I was the author of the chapter on Canada. The panel was chaired by Jan Bernd Nordemann from Germany and included Elisa Huusk from Finland and John Osha from the United States. . We had an interesting discussion comparing the new European approach to protecting unstructed data with the North American approach which has so far favoured limited protection for such data. 

Non-Fungible Tokens

Sunday, September 11, 2022

At the AIPPI annual meeting I chaired a panel on Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).  This panel consisted of a crypto artist Soy Fira and experts Sarah Odenkirk from Cowan DeBaets and Stephen MacKenzie from Koch Disruptive Technologies. The panel explored the business of selling NFTs, the rights that are acquired or not acquired and best practices when contracting for the purchase of an NFT.

Fordham Law School Fair Use Panel

Friday, April 22, 2022

On April 22, 2022, I participated as a panelist at the Fordham Law School's Hansen annual intellectual property conference. The subject was Fair Use and in particular the recent US Second Circuit Warhol decision and the Supreme Court decision in Google v. Oracle.  Speakers on the panel included Prof Jane Ginsburg, Joseph Gratz and Daan Erikson.

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AIPPI Annual Meeting

Friday, October 22, 2021

At the AIPPI annual meeting I participated as chairman of the international leadership team for Study Question 278 "Industrial designs and the role of prior art".  Previous to this, I had also been chairman of the Canadian group studying this question.

I also participated in the Canadian Group studying Q276 "Inventiveness and sufficiency of disclosure in AI inventions"

In addition I participated as discussion leader in the AIPPI cafe 34 session "Parody, satire and pastiche"  lead by Dale Nelson.

Rights in Data

Tuesday, October 5, 2021

I am pleased to report that I have authored the Canadian chapter of a new book entitled "Law of Raw Data" published by Wolters Kluwer. This book was edited by Christian Czychowski and Jan Bernd Nordemann.  It followed from a study on IP rights in data that was undertaken  by the AIPPI in 2020. 

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