Canada’s Top Court and the Google Injunction

By Richard Stobbe

When can a Canadian court reach across borders and control online activity that happens outside Canada? The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) handed down its decision in Google v. Equustek Solutions Inc., a case that started as a garden-variety intellectual property (IP) dispute, and ended up in the country’s top court as a significant guide for when the law will be imposed on those beyond Canadian borders, and those who are not even a party to the original dispute. The recent judgment deals with an IP owner – Equustek – who sought a practical remedy against an IP infringer, Datalink.

Equustek alleged that Datalink had engaged in misappropriation of trade secrets, passing off and breach of confidentiality. When Datalink refused to comply with the court’s original orders to cease sales of the allegedly infringing products, Equustek turned to Google, asking the search engine provider to block or de-list Datalink’s website. Equustek argued that it could only find an effective remedy against a determined infringer by blocking access to the infringing webpages, where the competing products were being sold by Datalink. (See our earlier posts for a more detailed summary of the facts of this case.)

The issue on appeal to the SCC was whether Google can be ordered, before a trial, to “globally de-index the websites of a company which, in breach of several court orders, is using those websites to unlawfully sell the intellectual property of another company.” Applying what it called “classic interlocutory injunction jurisprudence”, the SCC rejected Google’s counter-arguments and decided to uphold the injunction against Google. Thus the current state of the law in Canada is that non-party actors such as Google can be ordered by a Canadian court to take certain steps with worldwide effect, reaching outside Canada’s borders.

There are a number of fascinating elements to this case, which is why it has garnered so much attention and commentary. It’s worth emphasizing a few points from this controversial case:

1. Remember, Google was never a party to the original lawsuit. The search engine did nothing illegal or improper, nor was it implicated in the infringing conduct other than acting as a passive intermediary. However the Court noted that Google was so involved in facilitating the allegedly infringing behavior that the Court was justified in constraining Google’s activities in order to prevent the harmful conduct of the infringer. This, the Court said, is nothing new. Non-parties such as Google are often the subject of court orders.

2. Google had offered to block the search result listings from its < google.ca > site, but Equustek argued (and the Court agreed) that, to be effective, the order against Google had to be worldwide in effect. If restricted to Canada only, the order would not have the intended effect of preventing the irreparable harm to Equustek. “The Internet has no borders — its natural habitat is global,” said the Court. “The only way to ensure that the interlocutory injunction attained its objective was to have it apply where Google operates — globally. ”

However this ignores the fact that Equustek’s IP rights are not global in scope. Indeed, there was very little analysis of Equustek’s IP rights by any of the different levels of court, something noted by the dissent. Since this entire case involved pre-trial remedies, the merits of the underlying allegations and the strength of Equustek’s IP rights were never tested at trial. In order for the injunction to make sense, one must assumed that the IP rights were valid. Even so, Equustek’s rights couldn’t possibly be worldwide in nature. There was no evidence of any worldwide patent or trademark portfolio. So, the court somehow skipped from “the internet is borderless” to “the infringed rights are borderless” and are deserving of a worldwide remedy.

3. Lastly, Google raised a few other arguments – based on freedom of speech and international comity – that the Court batted away. Free speech, the Court argued, does not extend to protect the sale of articles that infringe IP rights. And as for international comity – the idea that each country should have mutual reciprocal respect for the laws of other countries in the international community, and that one law should not compel a person to break the laws of another country – the Court sidestepped this issue.  If there is any such offense to the principles of international comity, said the Court, then Google is free to apply again to the Canadian courts to vary the order accordingly. At the date of the hearing at the SCC, Google had made no such application. However, as soon as the ink had dried on the judgement, Google applied to Federal Court in California, its home jurisdiction, seeking relief from the reach of the SCC order. This request has been supported by a line-up of intervenors in the US blaring headlines such as “Top Canadian Court Permits Worldwide Internet Censorship“!

A copy of Google’s motion for relief in the US court is here.

With this maneuver, Google may be writing a rule-book on how to delimit or constrain the scope of the SCC’s reach by appealing to US courts. As between Canada and the US, this may help clarify the limits of how Canadian court orders will impact US persons. Let’s not forget that US courts don’t hesitate to make extraterritorial orders of their own. Other countries routinely do the same, so this is by no means a uniquely Canadian scenario.

I noted in January, 2016 that this case was one to watch, and in 2017 it remains true. We will monitor and report back on the results of Google’s US Federal Court action.

Calgary – 07:00 MST

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A sale in Canada triggers exhaustion of patent rights in the US

By Richard Stobbe

“Patent exhaustion” is something we’ve reviewed before. To recycle an old line, the term “patent exhaustion” does not refer to the feeling you get when a patent agent talks for 3 hours about the process of a patentee traversing a rejection in reexamination proceedings.

Nope, this is the patent law concept that the first authorized, unrestricted sale of a patented item ends, or “exhausts,” the patent-holder’s right to ongoing control of that item, leaving the buyer free to use or resell the patented item without restriction. For example, if you buy a patented widget from the patent owner, you can resell that widget to your neighbour without fear of infringing the patent.

What if the widget is sold by the U.S. patent holder in Canada? Does this exhaust the patent rights in the U.S.?

The US Supreme Court has recently confirmed that when the holder of a U.S. patent sells an item in an unrestricted sale, the patent holder does not retain patent rights in that product, even where that sale takes place outside the US. Thus, an authorized sale of the patented article in Canada by the U.S. patent holder would trigger exhaustion of the U.S. patent rights. The U.S. Supreme Court has confirmed that “An authorized sale outside the United States, just as one within the United States, exhausts all rights under the [U.S.] Patent Act.”

See: IMPRESSION PRODUCTS, INC. v. LEXMARK INTERNATIONAL, INC. (Decided May 30, 2017)

 

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Wait… “GOOGLE” is not a generic word?

By Richard Stobbe

Is Google a brand or just a word meaning “conduct an online search”?

A trademark can suffer “genericide” when it becomes so commonly used that it transforms from a unique brand name into a generic word which is synonymous with a product or service. In a very interesting decision from the US Ninth Circuit Court Court of Appeals in Elliott and Gillespie v. Google Inc. , the trademark GOOGLE was challenged on this basis: that it had become a word describing “searching on the internet” in a general sense, rather than a being distinctive of search services provided through the GOOGLE-brand search engine.

The court had a good description of “genericide”: “Genericide occurs when the public appropriates a trademark and uses it as a generic name for particular types of goods or services irrespective of its source. For example, ASPIRIN, CELLOPHANE, and THERMOS were once protectable as arbitrary or fanciful marks because they were primarily understood as identifying the source of certain goods. But the public appropriated those marks and now primarily understands aspirin, cellophane, and thermos as generic names for those same goods.”

This case arose due to an underlying domain name complaint. Google asserted its trademark rights against Elliott and Gillespie based on their registration of hundreds of domain names that included the word “google”; for example, “googledisney.com,” “googlebarackobama. net,” and “googlenewtvs.com.”  Elliott and Gillespie fought back because hey, if you’re going to fight back, why not take on Google? They petitioned to cancel the trademark registrations for GOOGLE, which would in turn eliminate the basis for Google’s domain name complaint.

Elliott and Gillespie argued the “indisputable fact that a majority of the relevant public uses the word ‘google’ as a verb—i.e., by saying ‘I googled it,’ and … verb use constitutes generic use.”

The court reviewed the history of genericide under trademark law and applied a test of whether the relevant public understands a mark as describing where a product comes from, or what a product is.  Put another way, if a word still describes where the product comes from, then the term is still valid as a trademark.  But if consuming public understands the word to have become the product itself (and not the producer of the product), then the mark slips into being a generic term. Escalator is another example. It became synonymous with a moving staircase product, rather than distinctive of the Otis Elevator Company as the producer of that product.

In Google’s case, the court  asserted that verb use (the use of the mark as a verb instead of an adjective) does not automatically result in a finding of genericness. The court also noted that a claim of genericide must relate to a particular type of product or service. “In order to show that there is no efficient alternative for the word “google” as a generic term,” the court argued, “Elliott must show that there is no way to describe ‘internet search engines’ without calling them ‘googles.’ Because not a single competitor calls its search engine ‘a google,’ and because members of the consuming public recognize and refer to different ‘internet search engines,’ Elliott has not shown that there is no available substitute for the word ‘google’ as a generic term.”

Compare this to the case of Q-TIPS which concluded that “medical swab” and “cotton-tipped applicator” are efficient alternatives for the brand Q-TIPS, whereas a US case involving the ASPIRIN mark concluded that, at the time, there was no efficient substitute for the term “aspirin” because consumers did not know the term “acetylsalicylic acid”, so they used “aspirin” in a generic sense.  Interestingly, the brand ASPIRIN remains a registered mark in Canada, although Bayer lost its trademark rights to genericide in the US.

Google survived the genericide test this time. To keep track of future attempts to challenge Google’s trademark rights, please conduct an internet search using a GOOGLE® brand search engine.

 

Calgary – 07:00 MST

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US Drone Registry is Shot Down

By Richard Stobbe

In response to the proliferation of recreational drones in American skies, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) introduced a rule known as the “Registration Rule” in 2015.  The rule required drone owners to register their drones with the FAA.   A recreational operator filed petitions in US Federal Court to challenge the FAA’s jursdiction to make the Registration Rule. The drone operator’s argument was that the FAA lacked statutory authority to issue the Registration Rule since it was outside the scope of the FAA’s jurisdiction. Last week, a  US Federal Court of Appeals decision  agreed and quashed the FAA’s Registration Rule.

This represents a set-back for the FAA’s regulatory reach over drones, and it illustrates the jurisdictional quandry of aviation regulators. In the US case, the FAA’s authority was actually curtailed by an earlier 2012 law, and this case did not turn upon a question of constitutional juridiction.

In Canada, there is a separation of powers between federal and provincial governments, and aviation falls into federal authority (as it does in the US). It is certainly open to drone operators to question the scope of the federal rule-making authority on constitutional grounds. In fact, in the drone industry that type of fight is likely to occur sooner or later in Canada.

If the FAA does not confirm its regulatory scope either through a court decision or amended legislation, then it won’t be able to maintain the drone Registration Rule. In any event, mere registration pales in comparison with the level of control that is suggested by this reported plan: The Trump administration is planning to ask Congress to give the federal government sweeping powers to “track, hack and destroy any type of drone over domestic soil with a new exception to laws governing surveillance, computer privacy and aircraft protection.

This makes recent Canadian drone regulations positively benign by comparison.

 

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Copyright in Seismic Data is Confirmed

By Richard Stobbe

In a decision last year, GSI (Geophysical Service Incorporated) sued to win control over seismic data that it claimed to own. GSI used copyright principles to argue that by creating databases of seismic data, it was the proper owner of the copyright in such data. GSI argued that Encana, by copying and using that data without the consent of GSI, was engaged in copyright infringement. That was the core of GSI’s argument in multi-party litigation, which GSI brought against Encana and about two dozen other industry players, including commercial copying companies and data resellers.  The data, originally gathered and “authored” by GSI, was required to be disclosed to regulators under the regime which governs Canadian offshore petroleum resources. Seismic data is licensed to users under strict conditions, and for a fee. Copying the seismic data, by any method or in any form, is not permitted under these license agreements. However, it is customary for many in the industry to acquire copies of the data from the regulator, after the privilege period expired, and many took advantage of this method of accessing such data.

A lower court decision in April 2016 (see: Geophysical Service Incorporated v Encana Corporation, 2016 ABQB 230 (CanLII))  agreed with GSI that seismic data could be protected by copyright. However, the court rejected the copyright infringement claims, saying that the regulatory regime permits the regulator to make such materials available for anyone – including industry stakeholders – to view and copy. Thus, GSI’s central infringement claim was dismissed.

GSI appealed, and in April, 2017 the Alberta Court of Appeal (Geophysical Service Incorporated v EnCana Corporation, 2017 ABCA 125 (CanLII)) unanimously agreed to uphold the lower court decision and reject GSI’s appeal. The decision confirmed that industry players have a legal right to use and copy such data after expiry of the confidentiality period, and the court was clear that regulators have the “unfettered and unconditional legal right … to disseminate, in their sole discretion as they see fit, all materials acquired … and collected under the Regulatory Regime”.  While the regulatory regime in this case does not specify that seismic data may be “copied”, there are extensive provisions about “disclosure”, none of which list any restrictions after expiry or the confidentiality or privilege period. Thus, the ability to copy data is the only rational interpretation which aligns with the objectives of the legislation.

This decision will apply not only to the specific area of seismic data, but to any materials which are released to the public pursuant to a similar regulatory regime.

Field Law acted for two of the successful respondents in the appeal.

 

Calgary – 07:00 MT

 

 

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Copyright Infringement on a Website: the risks of scraping and framing

By Richard Stobbe

If photos are available on the internet, then… they’re free for the taking, right?

Wait, that’s not how copyright law works? In the world of copyright, each original image theoretically has an “author” who created the image, and is the first owner of the copyright. The exception to this rule is that an image (or, indeed, any other copyright-protected work), which is created by an employee in the course of employment is owned by the employer. So, an image has an owner, even if that owner chose to post the image online. And copying that image without the permission of the owner could be an infringement of the owner’s copyright.

That seemingly simple question was the subject of a lawsuit between two rival companies who are in the business of listing online advertisements for new and used vehicles. Trader Corp. had a head start in the Canadian marketplace with its autotrader.ca website. Trader had the practice of training its employees and contractors to take vehicle photos in a certain way, with certain staging and lighting. A U.S. competitor, CarGurus, entered the market in 2015. It was CarGurus practice to obtain its vehicle images by “indexing” or “scraping” Dealers’ websites. Essentially, the CarGurus software would “crawl” an online image to identify data of interest, and then extract the data for use on the CarGurus site.

As part of its “indexing” or “scraping”, the CarGurus site apparently included some photos that were owned by Trader. Although some back-and-forth between the parties resulted in the takedown of a large number of images from the CarGurus site, the dispute boiled over into litigation in late 2015 – the lawsuit by Trader alleged copyright infringement in relation to thousands of photos over which Trader claimed ownership.

Some interesting points arise from the decision in Trader v. CarGurus, 2017 ONSC 1841 (CanLII):

Trader was only able to establish ownership in 152,532 photos. There were thousands of photos for which Trader could not show convincing evidence of ownership. This speaks to the inherent difficulty in establishing a solid evidentiary record of ownership of individual images across a complex business operation.

CarGurus raised a number of noteworthy defences:

  • First, CarGurus argued that in the case of some of the photos there was no actual “copying” or “reproduction” of the original image file. Rather, CarGurus argued that it merely framed the image files. Put another way, “although the images from Dealers’ websites appeared to be part of CarGurus’ website, they were not physically present on CarGurus’ server, but located on servers hosting the Dealers’ websites.”
    The court was not convinced by the novel argument. “In my view” the court declared, “when CarGurus displayed the photo on its website, it was ‘making it available’ to the public by telecommunication (in a way that allowed a member of the public to have access to it from a place and at a time individually chosen by that member), regardless of whether the photo was actually stored on CarGurus’ server or on a third party’s server.”
    The court decided that by making the images available to the public in through its framing technique, CarGurus infringed Trader’s copyright.
    This tells us that copyright infringement can occur even where the infringer is not storing or hosting the copyright-protected work on its own server.
  • Second, CarGurus attempted to mount a “fair dealing” defense. It is not an infringement if the copying is for the purpose of “research or private study.” The court also rejected this argument, saying that even if a consumer was engaged in “research” when viewing the images in the course of car shopping, it would be too much of a stretch to accept that CarGurus was engaged in research. Theirs was clearly a commercial purpose.
  • Lastly, the lawyers for CarGuru argued that, even if infringement did occur, CarGurus should be shielded from any damages award by virtue of section 41.27(1) of the Copyright Act. This provision was originally designed as a “safe harbour” for search engines and other network intermediaries who might inadvertently cache or reproduce copyright-protected works in the course of providing services, provided the search engine or intermediary met the definition of an “information location tool”. Although CarGurus does assist users with search functions (after all, it searches and finds vehicle listings), the court batted away this argument, pointing out that CarGurus cannot be considered an intermediary in the same way a search engine is. This particular subsection has never been the subject of judicial interpretation until now.

Having dismissed these defences, the Court assessed damages for copyright infringement at $2.00 per photo, for a total statutory damages award in the amount of $305,064.

CALGARY – 07:00 MT

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Defamation with the Click of a Mouse: Assessing Damages

By Richard Stobbe

In the midst of a challenging period for a condominium owners association in a property located in Costa Rica, the president of the association resigned in frustration. Someone had overheard a rumour that the president resigned because he had been accused of theft. This rumour was false and when it was repeated by email – an email sent by means of the trusty ‘reply-all’ feature – all 37 condo owners were copied with the defamatory rumours.

An Ontario court recently rendered a decision in this email defamation case (McNairn v Murphy, 2017 ONSC 1678 (CanLII)), noting that the defamation occurred in ‘cyberspace’: “Communications via the Internet such as email, are potentially more pervasive than other forms of communication since control over its distribution is lost in numerous people may have access to it [and an] email containing a defamatory statement may be sent by [a] recipient to others who in turn may send it to an even larger audience. The Internet has the extraordinary capacity to replicate a defamatory statement, in [its] sleep. As a result, the mode in extent of publication, is [a] particularly significant consideration in assessing general damages [in]Internet defamation cases.”

In awarding damages of $160,000 against two defendants, the court noted that damages in defamation cases are assumed if publication of defamatory statements is evidenced, assuming there are no defences. The defamed individual need not show any specific loss. General damages in defamation cases can serve three functions:

(a) to console the plaintiff for the distress suffered in the publication of the defence;

(b) to repair the harm to the plaintiff’s reputation including, where relevant, business reputation; and

(c) to vindicate the plaintiff’s reputation.

The court applied the following six factors in determining general damages in defamation cases:

1. the plaintiff’s position and standing;

2. the nature and seriousness of the defamatory statements;

3. the mode or type of publication;

4. the absence or refusal to retract or apologize for the statements;

5. the conduct and motive of the defendant; and

6. the presence of aggravating or mitigating circumstances.

Defamation by means of mouse click is easy to do.

And, it should be noted, it’s not that difficult to make a full retraction and apology by the click of a mouse, particularly in a small community of 37 individuals. From the facts available in this case, an unreserved retraction and sincere apology may have been worth $160,000.

Calgary – 07:00 MT

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Patent Infringement for Listing on eBay?

By Richard Stobbe

A patent owner notices that knock-off products are listed for sale on eBay. The knock-offs appear to infringe his patent. When eBay refuses to remove the allegedly infringing articles. The patent owner sues eBay for patent infringement, claiming that eBay is infringing the patent merely by hosting the listings, since listing the infringing articles amounts to an infringing “sale” or an infringing “offer to sell” the patented invention.

These are the facts faced by a U.S. court in Blazer v. eBay Inc. which decided that merely listing the articles for sale does not constitute patent infringement by means of an infringing sale, where it’s clear that the articles are not owned by eBay and are not directly sold by eBay.  In fact,  in the eBay model the seller makes a sale directly to the buyer – eBay can be characterized as a platform for hosting third party listings, rather than a seller.  

Some interesting points arise from this decision:

  • Prior patent infringement cases involving Amazon and Alibaba have suggested that the court will look closely at how the items are listed. For example, in those earlier cases, the court noted the use of the term “supplier” to describe the party selling the item, whereas the word “seller” is used in the eBay model. The term “supplier” might be taken to mean that the listing party is merely supplying the item to the platform provider, such as Amazon or Alibaba, who then sells to the end-buyer. Whereas the term “seller” identifies that the listing party is entering into a separate transaction with the end-buyer, leaving the platform provider out of that buy-sell transaction.
  • The court in Blazer was clear that it will look at the entire context of the exchange to determine not only if an offer is being made, but who is making the offer.
  • The “Terms of Use” or “Terms of Service” will be scrutinized by the court to help with this determination. The eBay terms explicitly advise users that eBay is not making an offer through a listing, and eBay lacks title and possession of the items listed.

Related Reading: eBay Not Liable for Listing Infringing Products of Third-Party Sellers – Not an Offer to Sell by eBay

 

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Canadian Copyright & Breach of Technological Protection Measures (TPMs): $12.7 million in Damages

By Richard Stobbe

It’s always exciting when there’s a new decision about an obscure 5-year old subsection of the Copyright Act! Back in 2012, Canada changed its Copyright Act to try and drag it into the 21st century. Among the 2012 changes were provisions to prohibit the circumvention of TPMs. In plain English, this means that breaking digital locks would be a breach of the Copyright Act.

In Nintendo of America Inc. v. King and Go Cyber Shopping (2005) Ltd. the Federal Court reviewed subsections 41 and 41.1 of the Act. In this case, the defendant Go Cyber Shopping was sued for circumvention of the TPMs which protected Nintendo’s well-known handheld video game consoles known as the Nintendo DS and 3DS, and the Wii home video game console.  Specifically, Nintendo’s TPMs were designed to protect the code in Nintendo’s game cards (in the case of DS and 3DS games) and discs (in the case of Wii games).

The defendants were sued for copyright infringement (for the copying of the code and data files in the game cards and discs) and for circumvention of the TPMs. Interestingly (for copyright lawyers), the claim was based on “secondary infringement” which resulted from the authorization of infringing acts when Go Cyber Shopping provided its customers with instructions on how to copy Nintendo’s data.

The Court agreed that Nintendo’s digital locks qualified as “technological protection measures” for the purposes of the Act. The open-ended language of the TPM definition permits copyright owners to protect their business models with “any technological tool at their disposal.” This is an important acknowledgement for copyright owners, as it expands the range of technical possibilities, based on the principle of “technological neutrality” which avoids discrimination against any particular type of technology, device, or component. To put this another way, a copyright owner should be able to fit into the definition of a TPM  fairly easily since there is no specific technical criteria, aside from the general reference to an “effective technology, device or component that, in the ordinary course of its operation, controls access to a work…”

Next, the court agreed with Nintendo that Go Cyber Shopping has engaged in “circumvention” which means “to descramble a scrambled work or decrypt an encrypted work or to otherwise avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate or impair the technological protection measure…”

Lastly, Nintendo sought statutory damages, which avoids the need to show actual damages, and instead relies on automatic damages at a set amount. The court has a range from which to pick.  Nintendo suggested statutory damages between $294,000 to $11,700,000 for TPM circumvention of 585 different Nintendo Games, based on a statutorily mandated range between $500 and $20,000 per work. For copyright infringement, the evidence showed infringement of 3 so-called “Header Data” files. The court was convinced to award damages at the highest level of the range.

In the end the court made an award in favour of Nintendo, setting statutory damages at $11,700,000 for TPM circumvention in respect of its 585 Nintendo Games, and of $60,000 for copyright infringement in respect of the three Header Data works. This shows that TPM circumvention, as a remedy for copyright owners, has real teeth and may, in the right circumstances, easily surpass the damages awarded for copyright infringement. On top of this, the court awarded punitive damages of $1,000,000 in light of the “strong need to deter and denounce such activities.” Total… $12.7 million.

 

Calgary – 07:00 MT

 

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Interim Canadian drone rules launched

By Richard Stobbe

As the recreational and commercial use of drones expands, the calls for a regulatory framework have grown louder. The Canadian federal government has, until last week, taken the simple approach of prohibiting the use of UAVs: “No person shall operate an unmanned air vehicle in flight except in accordance with a special flight operations certificate or an air operator certificate.” Essentially, any commercial use of drones or use of drones that weigh more than 35 kg had to be registered with a Special Flight Operations Certificate (SFOC) through Transport Canada.

So far, the system of regulatory control was simplistic but not exactly scaleable, considering the explosive growth in this area.

Last week, as part of its effort to bring order to the chaos, the Canadian federal government released its Interim Order Respecting the Use of Model Aircraft under the Canadian Aviation Regulations which fall under the Aeronautics Act.

Now, if you fly your drone for recreational purposes and it weighs between 250 g and 35 kg, you don’t need an SFOC from Transport Canada to fly. But wait… there’s more!

This interim order essentially classifies small recreational drones as “model aircraft”, keeps the distinction for “unmanned air vehicles”, and adds some regulatory details.  The old regulations took a broad brush approach to the relatively small population of model aircraft hobbyists (hey guys… don’t fly into a cloud or in a manner that is hazardous to aviation safety). By contrast, the new rules provide a more objective set of criteria. Now, a person must not operate a recreational drone or model aircraft:

  1. at an altitude greater than 300 feet AGL;
  2. at a lateral distance of less than 250 feet (75m) from buildings, structures, vehicles, vessels, animals and the public;
  3. within 9 km of an aerodrome;
  4. unless it is operated within VLOS (visual line-of-sight) at all times during the flight;
  5. at a lateral distance of more than 1640 feet (500 m) from the person’s location;
  6. within controlled airspace;
  7. within restricted airspace;
  8. over or within a forest fire area, or any area that is located within 9 km of a forest fire area;
  9. over or within the security perimeter of a police or first responder emergency operation site;
  10. over or within an open-air assembly of persons;
  11. at night;
  12. in cloud;
  13. while operating another drone or model aircraft;
  14. unless the name, address and telephone number of the owner is clearly made visible on the aircraft.

Sigh… one can’t help a certain nostalgia for any regulation that still uses the word “aerodrome”. Those are just some of the new drone rules. Drones used for commercial or research purposes still require an SFOC.

For breach of the rules applying to recreational use, there are fines of between $3,000 and $15,000.

For our readers in Calgary, check out Taking Off: Drone Law in Canada where our Emerging Technologies Group presents an overview of the legal landscape surrounding drone use and discusses what you need to know to use drones in your business. The seminar will cover topics including:

  • Discussion of the current regulatory approach at the federal, provincial and municipal level
  • Potential privacy, contract and insurance issues
  • Drone-related liability
  • Patent/intellectual property protection

Additional Reading: The Wild West: Drone Laws And Privacy In Canada

Calgary – 07:00 MT

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Experimental Use of an Invention

By Richard Stobbe

Inventors must take care that their invention is “new” for it to be patentable. That means the invention hasn’t been disclosed to the public. Trade show announcements, press releases, publications, offering the invention for sale – all of these can be considered a public disclosure, and if disclosure of the invention occurs before the date of filing of the patent application, this disclosure could defeat patentability, since the invention is no longer “new” for patenting purposes.

In Canada and the U.S. there is a 12-month grace period, so the date of prior disclosure is measured against this 12-month period: put another way, patentability may be lost if the invention was disclosed by the inventor more than one year before the filing date of the patent.

So how does this apply to experimental use? How can an inventor test new inventions and avoid the problems associated with public disclosure?

The recent decision in Bombardier Recreational Products Inc. v. Arctic Cat Inc. is interesting in a number of ways, but in this discussion I want to flag one element of the case. Arctic Cat was sued by Bombardier for infringement of certain snowmobile patents, which related to a particular configuration of rider position and frame construction.  Arctic Cat raised a number of defenses and one of them was “prior public disclosure.” Since Bombardier, the patent-holder, tested its prototypes of the snowmobiles on public trails, Arctic Cat argued that, in and of itself, constituted public disclosure, since “someone could have witnessed the rider’s hips above his knees, and the ankles behind the knees, and the hips behind the ankles.”

Unhappily for Arctic Cat, the court dryly dismissed this defense as “another one of those last-ditch efforts.”

Citing an inventor’s freedom to engage in “reasonable experimentation”, the court went on to say: “Since at least 1904, our law has recognized the need to experiment in order to bring the invention to perfection. …In this case, the evidence is that [Bombardier] was conscious of the need for confidentiality and took steps to ensure it would be protected. The experimentation was necessary in view of the many uses that would be available for that new configuration.”

The court noted that, even if a member of the public could have seen the prototype snowmobile “there is little information that is made available to the public while riding the snowmobile on a trail, even for the person skilled in the art. The necessary information to enable is not made available. The invention disclosed in the Patents is not understood, its parameters are not accessible and it would not be possible to reproduce the invention on the simple basis that a snowmobile has been seen on a trail.”

Applying the well-recognized experimental use exception, the court found that experimental use on a public trail did not constitute prior public disclosure of the inventions. Inventors should take care to handle experimental use very carefully.  Make sure you get advice on this from experienced IP advisors.

Related Reading: A Distinctly Canadian Patent Fight

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Another Canadian Decision Reaches Outside Canada

By Richard Stobbe

This fascinating Ontario case deals with an Alberta-based individual who complained of certain material that was re-published on the website Globe24h.com based in Romania. The server that hosted the website was located in Romania. The material in question was essentially a re-publication of certain publicly available Canadian court and tribunal decisions.

The Alberta individual complained that this conduct – the re-publication of a Canadian tribunal decision on a foreign server – was a breach of his privacy rights since he was named personally in this tribunal decision.

So, let’s get this straight, this is a privacy-based complaint relating to republication in public of a publicly available decision?

Yes, you heard that right. This Romanian site scraped decisions from Canadian court and tribunal websites (information that was already online) and made this content searchable on the internet (making it …available online).

This is an interesting decision, and we’ll just review two elements:

The first issue was whether Canadian privacy laws (such as PIPEDA ) have extraterritorial application to Globe24h.com as a foreign-based organization.  On this point, the Ontario court, citing a range of past decisions (including the Google v. Equustek decision which is currently being appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada) said:

“In this case, the location of the website operator and host server is Romania. However, when an organization’s activities take place exclusively through a website, the physical location of the website operator or host server is not determinative because telecommunications occur “both here and there”: Libman v The Queen, 1985 CanLII 51 (SCC), [1985] 2 SCR 178 at p 208 [Emphasis added]

Secondly, the Ontario court reviewed whether the Romanian business was engaged in “commercial activities” (since that is an element of PIPEDA) . The court noted the Romanian site  “was seeking payment for the removal of the personal information from the website. The fees solicited for doingdoing so varied widely. Moreover, if payment was made with respect to removal of one version of the decision, additional payments could be demanded for removal of other versions of the same information. This included, for example, the translation of the same decision in a Federal Court proceeding or earlier rulings in the same case.”

The Romanian site made a business out of removing data from this content, but the court’s conclusion that “The evidence leads to the conclusion that the respondent was running a profit-making scheme to exploit the online publication of Canadian court and tribunal decisions containing personal information.” [Emphasis added] – in a general sense, that statement could just as easily apply to Google or any of the commercial legal databases which are marketed to lawyers.

The court concluded that it could take jurisdiction over the Romanian website, and ordered the foreign party to take-down the offending content.

This decision represent another reach by a Canadian court to takedown content that has implications outside the borders of Canada.  From the context, it is likely that this decision is going to stand, since the respondent did not contest this lawsuit. The issue of extra-terrtorial reach of Canadian courts in the internet context is going to be overtaken by the pending Supreme Court decision in Equustek. Stay tuned.

 

Calgary – 07:00 MT

 

 

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VCC vs. VCC: Where’s the Confusion?

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By Richard Stobbe

When we’re talking about trademarks, at which point do we measure whether there is confusion in the mind of the consumer?

We reviewed this issue in 2015 (See: No copyright or trademark protection for metatags). In that earlier decision, Vancouver Community College sued a rival college for trademark infringement, on the basis of the rival college using “VCC” as part of a search-engine optimization and keyword advertising strategy. The court in that case said: “The authorities on passing off provide that it is the ‘first impression’ of the searcher at which the potential for confusion arises which may lead to liability. In my opinion, the ‘first impression’ cannot arise on a Google AdWords search at an earlier time than when the searcher reaches a website.” In other words, it is the point at which a searcher reaches the website when this “first impression” is gauged. Where the website is clearly identified without the use of any of the competitor’s trademarks, then there will be no confusion. That was then.

That decision was appealed and reversed in Vancouver Community College v. Vancouver Career College (Burnaby) Inc., 2017 BCCA 41 (CanLII). The BC Court of Appeal decided that the moment for assessing confusion is not when the searcher lands on the ‘destination’ website, but rather when the searcher first encounters the search results on the search page.  This comes from an analysis of the Trade-marks Act (Section 6) which says confusion occurs where “the use of the first mentioned trade-mark … would cause confusion with the last mentioned trade-mark.”

And it draws upon the mythical consumer or searcher – the “casual consumer somewhat in a hurry“. The BC court reinforced that “the test to be applied is a matter of first impression in the mind of a casual consumer somewhat in a hurry”, and as applied to the internet search context, this occurs when the searcher sees the initial search results.

To borrow a few phrases from other cases, trade-marks have a particular function: they provide a “shortcut to get consumers to where they want to go” and “Leading consumers astray in this way is one of the evils that trade-mark law seeks to remedy.” (As quoted in the VCC case at paragraph 68).  Putting this another way, the ‘evil’ of leading casual consumers astray occurs when the consumer sees the search results displaying the confusing marks.

On the subject of whether bidding on keywords constitutes an infringement of trademarks or passing-off, the court was clear: “More significantly, the critical factor in the confusion component is the message communicated by the defendant. Merely bidding on words, by itself, is not delivery of a message. What is key is how the defendant has presented itself, and in this the fact of bidding on a keyword is not sufficient to amount to a component of passing off…” (Paragraph 72, emphasis added).

The BC Court issued a permanent injunction against Vancouver Career College, restraining them from use of the mark “VCC” and the term “VCCollege” in connection with its internet presence.

Calgary – 07:00 MT

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Is there copyright in a screenshot?

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By Richard Stobbe

Ever wanted to remove something after it had been swallowed up in the gaping maw of the internet? Then you will relate to this story about an individual’s struggle to have certain content deleted from the self-appointed memory banks of the web.

The Federal Court recently rendered a procedural decision in the case of Davydiuk v. Internet Archive Canada and Internet Archive 2016 FC 1313 (for background, visit the Wayback Machine… or see our original post Copyright Implications of a “Right to be Forgotten”? Or How to Take-Down the Internet Archive).

For those who forget the details, this case relates to a long-running plan by Mr. Davydiuk to remove certain adult video content in which he appeared about a dozen years ago. He secured the copyright in the videos and all related material including images and photographs, and went about using copyright to remove the online reproductions of the content. In 2009, he discovered that Internet Archive, a defendant in these proceedings, was hosting some of this video material as part of its web archive collection.  It is Mr. Davydiuk’s apparent goal to remove all of the content from the Internet Archive – not only the video but also associated images, photos, and screenshots taken from the video.

The merits of the case are still to be decided, but the Federal Court has decided a procedural matter which touches upon an interesting copyright question:

When a screenshot is taken from a video, is there sufficient originality for copyright to extend to that screenshot? Or is it a “purely mechanical exercise not capable of copyright protection”?

This case is really about the use of copyright in aid of personal information and privacy goals. The Internet Archive argued that it shouldn’t be obliged to remove material for which there is no copyright. Remember, for copyright to attach to a work, it must be “original”. The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) has made it clear that:

For a work to be “original” within the meaning of the Copyright Act, it must be more than a mere copy of another work.  At the same time, it need not be creative, in the sense of being novel or unique.  What is required to attract copyright protection in the expression of an idea is an exercise of skill and judgment.  By skill, I mean the use of one’s knowledge, developed aptitude or practised ability in producing the work.  By judgment, I mean the use of one’s capacity for discernment or ability to form an opinion or evaluation by comparing different possible options in producing the work. This exercise of skill and judgment will necessarily involve intellectual effort. The exercise of skill and judgment required to produce the work must not be so trivial that it could be characterized as a purely mechanical exercise.  For example, any skill and judgment that might be involved in simply changing the font of a work to produce “another” work would be too trivial to merit copyright protection as an “original” work. [Emphasis added]

From this, we know that changing font (without more) is NOT sufficient to qualify for the purposes of originality. Making a “mere copy” of another work is also not considered original. For example, an exact replica photo of a photo is not original, and the replica photo will not enjoy copyright protection.  So where does a screenshot fall?

The Internet Archive argued that the video screenshots were not like original photographs, but more like a photo of a photo – a mere unoriginal copy of a work requiring a trivial effort.

On the other side, the plaintiff argued that someone had to make a decision in selecting which screenshots to extract from the original video, and this represented an exercise of sufficient “skill and judgment”.  The SCC did not say that the bar for “skill and judgment” is very high – it just has to be higher than a purely mechanical exercise.

At this stage in the lawsuit, the court merely found that there was enough evidence to show that this is a genuine issue. In other words, the issue is a live one, and it has to be assessed with the benefit of all the evidence. So far, the issue of copyright in a screenshot is still undetermined, but we can see from the court’s reasoning that if there is evidence of the exercise of “skill and judgment” involved in the decision-making process as to which particular screenshots to take, then these screenshots will be capable of supporting copyright protection.

Stay tuned.

 

Calgary – 07:00 MT

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Drone Patents

By Richard Stobbe

Last month, Amazon made its first delivery via drone with its Prime Air service. Remember, this is an e-commerce company not a drone manufacturer. Amazon is pushing the limits in the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and is laying the groundwork for an IP protection portfolio for this technology, even where it does not apparently benefit Amazon’s core business. This shows that innovation can open up other product channels that could be licensed, for example, to drone manufacturers. For instance, Amazon’s newest issued patent relates to a mini-drone to assist in police enforcement. Think of a traffic stop which is accompanied by the whine of a small pocket-sized drone that can monitor and record the interaction or chase bad guys.
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Other innovations are squarely within Amazon’s core competencies of order fulfillment. Another recently issued patent seeks to protect drones from being hacked and rerouted en route.

Another application filed in April 2016 describes an aerial blimp-like order fulfillment center utilizing UAVs to deliver items from above. This shows that the growth in drone-related patents will not all be related directly to the individual drones, but rather will relate to the evolving ecosystem around the use of UAVs, including remote control technologies, payload innovations, docking infrastructure, and commercial deployments such as the Death Star of e-commerce.

 

 

Calgary – 07:00

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IP Licenses & Bankruptcy (Part 2 – Seismic Data)

 

By Richard Stobbe

What happens to a license for seismic data when the licensee suffers a bankruptcy event?

In Part 1, we looked at a case of bankruptcy of the IP owner.

However, what about the case where the licensee is bankrupt? In the case of seismic, we’re talking about the bankruptcy of the company that is licensed to use the seismic data.  Most seismic data agreements are licenses to use a certain dataset subject to certain restrictions. Remember, licences are simply contractual rights.  A trustee or receiver of a bankrupt licensee is not bound by the contracts of the bankrupt company, nor is the trustee or receiver personally liable for the performance of those contracts.

The only limitation is that a trustee cannot disclaim or cancel a contract that has granted a property right. However, a seismic data license agreement does not grant a property right; it does not transfer a property interest in the data. It’s merely a contractual right to use. Bankruptcy trustees have the ability to disclaim these license agreements.

Can a trustee transfer the license to a new owner? If the seismic data license is not otherwise terminated on bankruptcy of the licensee, and depending on the assignment provisions within that license agreement, then it may be possible for the trustee to transfer the license to a new licensee. Transfer fees are often payable under the terms of the license. Assuming transfer is permitted, the transfer is not a transfer of ownership of the underlying dataset, but a transfer of the license agreement which grants a right to use that dataset.

The underlying seismic data is copyright-protected data that is owned by a particular owner. Even if a copy of that dataset is “sold” to a new owner in the course of a bankruptcy sale, it does not result in a transfer of ownership of the copyright in the seismic data, but rather merely a transfer of the license agreement to use that data subject to certain restrictions and conditions.

A purchaser who acquires a seismic data license as part of a bankruptcy sale is merely acquiring a limited right to use, not an unrestricted ownership interest in the data. The purchaser is stepping into the shoes of the bankrupt licensee and can only acquire the scope of rights enjoyed by the original licensee – neither more nor less. Any use of that data by the new licensee outside the scope of those rights would be a breach of the license agreement, and may constitute copyright infringement.

 

Calgary – 10:00 MT

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Google v. The Court: Free Speech and IP Rights (Part 2)

 
By Richard Stobbe

Last week, hearings concluded in the important case of Google Inc. v. Equustek Solutions Inc., et al.  The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) will render its judgment in writing, and the current expectation is that it will clarify the limits of extraterritoriality, and the unique issues of protected expression in the context of IP rights and search engines.

In Part 1, I admonished Google, saying “you’re not a natural person and you don’t enjoy Charter rights.” Some commentators have pointed out that this is too broad, and that’s a fair comment.  Indeed, it’s worth clarifying that corporate entities can benefit from certain Charter rights, and can challenge a law on the basis of unconstitutionality. The Court has also held that freedom of expression under s. 2(b) can include commercial expression, and that government action to unreasonably restrict that expression can properly be the subject of a Charter challenge.

The counter-argument about delimiting corporate enjoyment of Charter rights is grounded in a line of cases stretching back to the SCC’s 1989 decision in Irwin Toy where the court was clear that the term “everyone” in s. 7 of the Charter, read in light of the rest of that section, excludes “corporations and other artificial entities incapable of enjoying life, liberty or security of the person, and includes only human beings”.

Thus, in Irwin Toy and Dywidag Systems v. Zutphen Brothers  (see also: Mancuso v. Canada (National Health and Welfare), 2015 FCA 227 (CanLII)), the SCC has consistently held that corporations do not have the capacity to enjoy certain Charter-protected interests – particularly life, liberty and security of the person – since these are attributes of human beings and not artificial persons such as corporate entities.

It is also worth noting that the Charter is understood to place restrictions on government, but does not provide a right of a corporation to enforce Charter rights as against another corporation. Put another way, one corporation cannot raise a claim that another corporation has violated its Charter rights. While there can be no doubt that a corporation cannot avail itself of the protection offered by section 7 of the Charter, a corporate entity can avail itself of Charter protections related to unreasonable limits on commercial expression, where such limits have been placed on the corporate entity by the government – for example, by a law or regulation enacted by provincial or federal governments.

There is a good argument that the limited Charter rights that are afforded to corporate entities should not extend to permit a corporation to complain of a Charter violation where its “commercial expression” is restricted at the behest of another corporation in the context of an intellectual property infringement dispute.

 

Calgary – 07:00 MT

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Google v. The Court: Free Speech and IP Rights (Part 1)

 
By Richard Stobbe

Google Inc. v. Equustek Solutions Inc., et al., the long-running case involving a court’s ability to restrict online search results, and Google’s obligations to restrict search results has finally reached the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC). Hearings are proceeding this week, and the list of intervenors jostling for position at the podium is like a who’s-who of free speech advocates and media lobby groups. Here is a list of many of the intervenors who will have representatives in attendance, some of whom have their 10 minutes of fame to speak at the hearing:

  • The Attorney General of Canada,
  • Attorney General of Ontario,
  • Canadian Civil Liberties Association,
  • OpenMedia Engagement Network,
  • Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press,
  • American Society of News Editors,
  • Association of Alternative Newsmedia,
  • Center for Investigative Reporting,
  • Dow Jones & Company, Inc.,
  • First Amendment Coalition,
  • First Look Media Works Inc.,
  • New England First Amendment Coalition,
  • Newspaper Association of America,
  • AOL Inc.,
  • California Newspaper Publishers Association,
  • Associated Press,
  • Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University,
  • Online News Association and the Society of Professional Journalists (joint as the Media Coalition),
  • Human Rights Watch,
  • ARTICLE 19,
  • Open Net (Korea),
  • Software Freedom Law Centre and the Center for Technology and Society (joint),
  • Wikimedia Foundation,
  • British Columbia Civil Liberties Association,
  • Electronic Frontier Foundation,
  • International Federation of the Phonographic Industry,
  • Music Canada,
  • Canadian Publishers’ Council,
  • Association of Canadian Publishers,
  • International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers,
  • International Confederation of Music Publishers and the Worldwide Independent Network (joint) and
  • International Federation of Film Producers Associations.

The line-up at Starbucks must have been killer.

The case has generated a lot of interest, including this recent article (Should Canadian Courts Have the Power to Censor Search Results?) which speaks to the underlying unease that many have with the precedent that could be set and its wider implications for free speech.

You may recall that this case is originally about IP rights, not free speech rights. Equustek sued Datalink Technologies for infringement of the IP rights of Equustek. The original lawsuit was based on trademark infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets. Equustek successfully obtained injunctions prohibiting this infringement. It was Equustek’s efforts at stopping the ongoing online infringement, however, that first led to the injunction prohibiting Google from serving up search results which directed customers to the infringing websites.

It is common for an intellectual property infringer (as the defendant Datalink was in this case) to be ordered to remove offending material from a website. Even an intermediary such as YouTube or another social media platform, can be compelled to remove infringing material – infringing trademarks, counterfeit products, even defamatory materials. That is not unusual, nor should it automatically touch off a debate about free speech rights and government censorship.

This is because the Charter-protected rights of freedom of speech are much different from the enforcement of IP rights.

The Court of Appeal did turn its attention to free speech issues, noting that “courts should be very cautious in making orders that might place limits on expression in another country. Where there is a realistic possibility that an order with extraterritorial effect may offend another state’s core values, the order should not be made.  In the case before us, there is no realistic assertion that the judge’s order will offend the sensibilities of any other nation. It has not been suggested that the order prohibiting the defendants from advertising wares that violate the intellectual property rights of the plaintiffs offends the core values of any nation. The order made against Google is a very limited ancillary order designed to ensure that the plaintiffs’ core rights are respected.”

Thus, the fear cannot be that this order against Google impinges on free-speech rights; rather, there is a broader fear about the ability of any court to order a search engine to restrict certain search results in a way that might be used to restrict free speech rights in other situations.  In Canada, the Charter guarantees that everyone has the right to: “freedom of …expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication…” It is important to remember that in Canada a corporation is not entitled to guarantees found in Section 7 of the Charter. (See: Irwin Toy Ltd. v. Quebec (Attorney General), 1989 CanLII 87 (SCC), [1989] 1 S.C.R. 927)

So, while there have been complaints that Charter rights have been given short shrift in the lower court decisions dealing with the injunction against Google, it’s worth remembering that Google cannot avail itself of these protections. Sorry Google, but you’re not a natural person and you don’t enjoy Charter rights. [See Part 2 for more discussion on a corporation’s entitlement to Charter protections.]

Although free speech will be hotly debated at the courthouse, the Google case is, perhaps, not the appropriate case to test the limits of free speech. This is a case about IP rights enforcement, not government censorship.

 

Calgary – 07:00 MT

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IP Licenses & Bankruptcy Laws (Part 1)

By Richard Stobbe

When a company goes through bankruptcy, it’s a process that can up-end all of the company’s contractual relationships. When that bankrupt company is a licensor of intellectual property, then the license agreement can be one of the contracts that is impacted. A recent decision has clarified the rights of licensees in the context of bankruptcy.

In our earlier post – Changes to Canada’s Bankruptcy Laws – we reviewed changes to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (BIA) back in 2009. These changes have now been interpreted by the courts, some seven years later.

In Golden Opportunities Fund Inc. v Phenomenome Discoveries Inc., 2016 SKQB 306 (CanLII),  the court reviewed a license between a parent and its wholly-owned subsidiary. Through a license agreement, a startup licensor, which was the owner of a patent covering an invention pertaining to the testing and analysis of blood samples, licensed a patented invention to its wholly-owned subsidiary, Phenomenome Discoveries Inc. (PDI). PDI, in turn was the owner of any improvements that it developed in the patented invention, subject to a license of those improvements back to the parent company.

PDI went bankrupt. The parent company objected when the court-appointed receiver tried to sell the improvements to a new owner, free and clear of the obligations in the license agreement. In other words, the parent company wanted the right to continue its use of the licensed improvements and objected that the court-appointed receiver tried to sell those improvements without honoring the existing license agreement.

In particular, the parent company based its argument on those 2009 changes to Canada’s bankruptcy laws, arguing that licensees were now permitted keep using the licensed IP, even if the licensor went bankrupt, as long as the licensee continues to perform its obligations under the license agreement. Put another way, the changes in section 65.11 of the BIA should operate to prohibit a receiver from disclaiming or cancelling an agreement pertaining to intellectual property. The court disagreed.

The court clarified that “Section 65.11(7) of the BIA has no bearing on a court-appointed receivership.” Instead the decision in “Body Blue continues to apply to licences within the context of court-appointed receiverships. Licences are simply contractual rights.” (Note, the Body Blue case is discussed here.)

The court went on to note that a receiver is not bound by the contracts of the bankrupt company, nor is the receiver personally liable for the performance of those contracts. The only limitation is that a receiver cannot disclaim or cancel a contract that has granted a property right. However, IP license agreements do not grant a property right, but are merely a contractual right to use. Court-appointed receivers can disclaim these license agreements and can sell or dispose of the licensed IP free and clear of the license obligations, despite the language of Section 65.11(7) of the BIA.

Calgary – 10:00 MT

 

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How long does it take to get a patent?

By Richard Stobbe

Patent advisors are often asked this question. In Canada, CIPO has published the first-ever IP Canada Report, which contains an interesting trove of IP statistics. Among the infographics and pie-charts is a series of bar graphs showing the time to issuance for Canada patents.

Figure 25 – Average time period in months for the three main stages of the patent process (Courtesy of CIPO)

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Over the past four years, the patent office in Canada has been able to shave months off the delivery time, but the average is still in the neighbourhood of 80 months, or roughly 6 1/2 years.  Certainly some patents will issue sooner, in the 3 – 4 year range, and some will take much longer.  There are strategies to influence (to some degree) the pace of patent prosecution.

And remember, this is the time to issuance from filing. The time to prepare and draft the application must also be factored in.

Ensure that you get advice from your patent agent and budget for this period of time, it’s a commitment.  More questions on patenting your inventions? Contact us.

 

Calgary – 07:00 MT

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