Communications Law
AI Drake and AI The Weeknd?
While I was procrastinating from studying for various exams, I came across a new song by Drake and The Weeknd. As the title of the post suggests, the song was actually AI generated using Drake and The Weeknd vocals. The artist (“Ghostwriter977”) wrote the lyrics, recorded the vocals, and used AI to replace their vocals […]
Foreign Language Trademarks
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of us that Canadians are multilingual, especially to anyone who has lived in any of the metropolitan cities such as Vancouver or Toronto. According to the last Statistics Canada census, in 2021, 41.2% of people in Canada can conduct a conversation in more than one language and […]
Illuminating the NHL’s Blackout Rule
The other night, I got home after class and turned on my Sportsnet Now streaming channel to watch that evening’s broadcast of the Edmonton Oilers game. However, I was instead greeted with a message stating that the game was unavailable due to “regional or national blackout restrictions”. Given that I am a rational adult, I […]
CRISPR-Cas9: A Patent Contest
What is CRISPR-Cas9? By weight, there are over 27 times more bacteria than all animals combined. The most numerous organisms on earth are by far the viruses that utilize these bacteria as hosts, called bacteriophages. As one researcher colourfully put it: there are “approximately a trillion phages for every grain of sand in the world”. […]
Virtual Reality in Museums and Intellectual Property Law
Hello everyone! I’ve been interested in how IP law applies to virtual reality technology and decided look more into its use in museums and the legal issues that may arise. Professor Festinger, I would like to submit this post as my LAW 422 final paper. Thank you. ————————————————————————————————- VIRTUAL REALITY IN MUSEUMS AND INTELLECTUAL […]
Patent by PlayStation for Temperature-Controlled Haptic Feedback
I stumbled upon this article that reports on a new patent by PlayStation for temperature in their haptic feedback. Controller patents seem to be a huge area where video game and console developers patent technology. There have been massive innovations in controller tech over the decades, and it’s always interesting to see what will come […]
Industrial design rights and remedies in Canada reaffirmed by Crocs Canada v. Double Diamond
Hello, everyone. I was going through some of the previous posts on the website and was intrigued by the MSCHF in Law post. It led me down a footwear spiral and I also came across this case where the Federal Court of Canada in Crocs Canada, Inc. and Crocs Inc. v. Double Diamond Distribution Ltd. […]
Measuring consumer confusion regarding trademarks with brain scans
I came across this interesting paper (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abo1095 ) over the weekend that attempts to use neuroscience techniques to measure consumer confusion between two marks and might become a new form of evidence in trademark cases. In class, we learned that consumer surveys can sometimes be used to demonstrate whether there is confusion between two marks. […]
Meg’s IP Law Knitting Circle: Protecting Crochet Creators
For my final LAW422 project, I wanted to explore the copyright protection and culture of copying among the crochet creators of YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. It is thanks to this online community that I was able to learn how to crochet many of my favourite fashion pieces and design some of my own. Therefore, rather […]
Causing MSCHF in IP Law
MSCHF is a Brooklyn based art collective that has gained Internet stardom through controversial “drops” that remix pop culture and brands. (I had a lot of fun browsing through their latest drops, one of which includes the option to purchase paper shopping bags from luxury brands, aptly named “OnlyBags” so that purchasers can “flex”). Last […]