Communications Law
NFT’S and the Music Industry
An interesting article about how NFT’s are taking hold of the music industry, and a way to assert their power over copyright control: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/nfts-are-reshaping-artists-ip-rights
‘March Madness’ branding missing from women’s tournament
For all you sports fans: I was just reading about this interesting trademark issue concerning NCAA basketball. In essence, the fact that “March Madness” branding does not appear anywhere in relation to the women’s basketball version of the event is raising some eyebrows. I thought this was a clear example of the broader social impact […]
Amazon not liable for “unknowingly” stocking, selling, and dispatching knock-offs
Hi everyone, our trademarks class got me thinking about this EU ruling on Amazon from last year. The issue started when a cosmetics company requested that Amazon hand over some knock-off goods. Amazon complied in part, but also refused to reveal the identity of a seller who was listing the goods. The cosmetics company sued […]
Two thirds of Google searches last year had no click-through
A small addition to our recent conversations regarding information-aggregators like Google and Facebook: about two thirds of Google searches last year (and likely more) resulted in the user leaving without clicking through to any of the displayed sites, leaving a majority of traffic and ad revenue with Google. This is up substantially from approximately 50% […]
NFT’s,digital art, and copyrights
Hi everyone, a new type of crypto-token made massive waves on the internet last week (or the parts of the net that I look at anyways). You might have read this news of a collage of digital art that sold for USD 69,000,000. The transaction was a major victory for digital-artists and blockchain enthusiasts. The […]
SpaceX Copyright Issues
I came across an interesting copyright issue from 2015 that I wanted to share with you all! SpaceX won the first private spaceflight contract to resupply the International Space Station. Up until this point, NASA (a government agency) has run all missions themselves. So, images taken from space have generally been in the public domain […]
Project Podcast on Wiseau Studio
Hi class, Haya and I made a podcast for our final project on Wiseau Studio, LLC et al. v. Harper et al., 2020 ONSC 2504 about the documentary Room Full of Spoons. This documentary is about Tommy Wiseau and his movie the Room. The podcast discusses the claim brought by Wiseau against the documentarists for […]
Week 10: Video & Slides – March 19, 2021
Slides and video below… Jon
Equitable Access to COVID-19 Vaccines & Patent Protection presentation
Hi everyone, Coming from a public health background, I am very interested in the interaction between the international IP law system and issues around equitable access to medicines. My presentation is on this topic, in the context of COVID-19 vaccines. It is a brief overview of compulsory licensing, voluntary licensing and patent pooling, the TRIPS […]