Copyright has several rules which apply automatically. If an employee creates a work in the scope of employment, and absent an agreement to the contrary, the employer is the first owner of the copyright in the work.^[1] The Ontario Court of Appeal had occasion to focus on what is meant by the words ‘in the scope of employment’ in Nexus Solutions Inc. v. Krougly, 2026 ONCA 199.

At trial, the Court held that the employer, Nexus Solutions, did not establish that the software in question was created by Krougly ‘in the scope’ of employment, even though Krougly secretly . . . [more]

Once a patent is granted, it can be asserted in litigation against an alleged infringer. One of the remedies that can be obtained is “reasonable compensation” for pre-grant infringement pursuant to section 55(2) of the Patent Act. While relief is often sought and granted for pre-grant infringement, the remedy has some subtleties, including those arising from changing practices at the Canadian Patent Office.

Section 55(2) of the Patent Act states the following:

55(2) A person is liable to pay reasonable compensation to a patentee and to all persons claiming under the patentee for any damage sustained by the patentee

Research libraries are integral to scholarship, scientific discovery and economic innovation. A foundational element of this support is providing access to extensive collections of scholarly content — peer-reviewed journals and monographs, databases, archives and primary source materials — that enable current research methodologies. Of increasing concern is how libraries can fulfill these obligations when access to much of the essential research corpus is through digital access and governed by contracts that often explicitly or implicitly prohibit certain uses, including AI-driven research methodologies.

AI, cloud computing and increased processing power have accelerated the growth of computational research methodologies and scholars from . . . [more]

On March 6th, a prominent group of publishers including the 5 biggest global book publishers (Hachette, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Simon and Schuster) filed a lawsuit in NY federal court to try and shut down the shadow library “Anna’s Archive”. A decade ago, John Willinsky described scholarly publishing as having its “Napster moment” with the emergence of pirate sites like LibGen and Sci-Hub. The race to train large language models using sites like Anna’s Archive (which is the successor site of Libgen/Sci-Hub) feels like a second act, where these sites are not just channels for . . . [more]

The Federal Court of Appeal had the occasion to review the so-called non-use cancellation action under section 45 of the Trademark Act in the context of the acquisition of the trademarks by a new owner in the case Comité interprofessionnel du vin de champagne v. Coors Brewing Company^[1].

Section 45, and more specifically subsection 45(3), authorizes the Registrar of Trademarks, at the request of any person or on the Registrar’s own initiative, and following a proceeding initiated by a notice to the registered owner under subsection 45(1), to expunge from the Register of Trademarks the registration of . . . [more]

The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) took action^[1] to establish a framework to limit botnet traffic before they reach consumers’ devices.

The CRTC plays a limited role in regulating telecommunications service providers (TSPs) under the Telecommunications Act and protects Canadians from online harms under the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL).

Botnets are networks of computers, cellular phones, and other devices that have been infected with malware, allowing third parties to control the devices without the knowledge or consent of the owners.

After consulting with various organizations, the CRTC gathered input on blocking techniques and which activities to block to establish . . . [more]

It is rare that a term of imprisonment is given for breach of a Court Order, such as an injunction. The Federal Court issued an Anton Pillar order in a case of copyright infringement involving a pirate IPTV streaming service. After the persistent refusal of the defendant to comply, the Court was forced to consider a term of imprisonment as an inducement to seek compliance with its orders.

Since such enforcement action is fairly rare in copyright infringement cases, the Court reviewed the options for enforcing contempt of Court in Bell Media Inc. v. Marshall Macciacchera (Smoothstreams.tv), 2025 FC . . . [more]

The Copyright Act imposes liability for circumvention of technical protection measures (TPMs). Technical protection measures are defined in Section 41 of the Copyright Act as any effective technology, device or component that (a) controls access to a work; or (b) restricts the exercise of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner, such as reproducing or publishing the work. A person circumventing a TPM can be found liable, regardless of whether the circumvention is for an infringing or non-infringing purpose.

The liability for unauthorized access or circumvention of a TPM may be substantial. The Federal Court awarded over $ 12 million . . . [more]

The Canadian Patent Office has a procedure for the “re-examination” of a granted patent. However, this procedure is rarely used in Canada for several reasons. Less than half a dozen re-examinations are filed each year.

Anyone, including the owner of the patent may request re-examination on the basis of prior art, namely patents, patent applications and printed publications (see s. 48.1 of the Patent Act). The patent office forms a panel that determines whether the request raises “a substantial new question of patentability”.

If so, the patentee is notified and the patentee can respond to the request, including providing . . . [more]

The number one issue facing scholarly publishing today is research integrity. The crisis is associated with paper mills selling authorships to fabricated papers; reviewer cabals colluding with special issue guest editors; predatory journals, sans reviewers and editors, acting as auto-publish clubs; and papers rife with image and data manipulation. In response, publishers and editors are scrambling to retract thousands of corrupted papers, close complicit journals, and cease special issues. The publish-or-perish culture, often backed by cash incentives (now banned in China), can be blamed, as can publishers pushing papers through to capture open access fees. It all reflects how, in . . . [more]

Can the Alberta Privacy and Information Commissioner limit a foreign corporation from collecting images of Albertans for use in facial recognition software? That was the issue that came to the Court of Kings Bench of Alberta on the application by Clearview AI Inc. (“Clearview”) for judicial review of the decision of the Alberta Privacy and Information Commissioner.

Clearview obtains images of Albertans and Canadians by scraping publicly available data from web pages and social media sites on the internet. The privacy commissions of Alberta, British Columbia, Quebec, and Canada investigated Clearview’s practice of scraping images from the internet. A joint . . . [more]

Claims for infringement of a patent have an unusual place when it comes to limitation periods. A recent decision of the Alberta Court of Appeal has provided some clarity to this issue but there is still uncertainty as to limitation periods for infringement claims.

Most provinces have legislation that impose a limitation period on claims. For example, in Ontario, the Limitations Act provides that, “a proceeding shall not be commenced in respect of a claim after the second anniversary of the day on which the claim was discovered.” Similarly, in Alberta, “if a claimant does not seek a remedial . . . [more]