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]

This is a case of not closing the barn door after the horse is out, to use a pre-twentieth-century expression for a twenty-first-century issue. But, more precisely, I want to argue for propping the barn door open to enable the rest of the horses to run free after a good number have been questionably sold off.

Let me explain. Think of those sold-off horses as the research studies that at least three major research publishers – Taylor & Francis, Wiley, and Oxford University Press with more deals pending – have rented out to AI giants, such as Microsoft, for the . . . [more]

In file 9110-2023-0067 the CRTC reports on enforcement action taken against the Hudson’s Bay Company for allegedly violating Section 6(2)(c) and Sections 11(1) and 11(3) of CASL Canada’s Anti Spam Law.

Since CASL came into force in 2014 a large portion of enforcement action has been taken on the need to include in commercial electronic messages (CEMs) an unsubscribe mechanism that could be readily performed.

The investigation led to an allegation that the Hudson’s Bay Company sent CEMs between January 1, 2022, and November 30, 2023, without including an unsubscribe mechanism that could be readily performed.

The Hudson’s Bay Company . . . [more]

Section 73(3)(b) of the Patent Act permits the Commissioner of Patents to reinstate a patent that is deemed to be abandoned if he receives a proper application on time and if “the Commissioner determines that the failure occurred in spite of the due care required by the circumstances having been taken and informs the applicant of this determination.”

The Manual of Patent Office Practice sets out the due care standard.^[1] This standard was introduced by the Patent Law Treaty, which Canada adhered to and implemented with amendments to the Patent Act and Patent Rules on October 31, 2019.

The . . . [more]

The Federal Court of Appeal took the occasion of an appeal of the order of the Patented Medicines Prices Review Board (the “Board”) that required a patentee to share reports on medicines that were no longer under patent, to reaffirm the jurisdiction of the Board.

Courts have consistently held that the Board’s jurisdiction is limited to patented medicines and does not extend to medicines for which the patent has expired.^[1]

The Board ordered Galderma Canada Inc. (“Galderma”) to provide reports on sales for six years after the patent had expired.

Galderma had provided the reports while the medicine was . . . [more]

When was the last time you heard someone talk about NFTs? Was it when Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon showed off their Bored Apes on national television back in January of 2022? Or perhaps it was when Donald Trump unveiled his line of NFTs in December 2022. Or maybe, just maybe, you have that one friend who still insists, daily and with unwavering conviction, that NFTs are poised for a triumphant comeback, that the future of art is non-fungible, and that you’re a fool for not mortgaging your home to buy a JPEG of a doge meme. For the rest . . . [more]

The week of October 7th this year was quite something for Artificial Intelligence (AI). It was the object of two consecutive Nobel Prizes, awarded just days apart. The first, in Physics, went to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton (a British Canadian) for laying the foundations of machine learning. The second in Chemistry, won by Demis Hassabis, John Jumper, and David Baker, was for utilizing AI to predict millions of intricate protein structures that are key to understanding molecular interactions.

In stark contrast to this double triumph are some 20 copyright infringement suits filed against OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, . . . [more]

In R v. Pike^[1] the Ontario Court of Appeal considered the expansive search power of Customs and Border officers under s. 99(1)(a) of the Customs Act.^[2]

The Ontario Court of Appeal set the stage for the conflict between the respectful approach to border security and individual privacy rights as follows:

Millions of Canadians travel internationally each year with their personal computers, tablets, and smartphones. The contents of these devices attract some of the strongest privacy interests known to law because they are a window into their users’ lifestyles, beliefs, interests, desires, relationships, finances, health, and much more. But

Patents have a reputation of being difficult to read and understand and a key part of most patent litigation proceedings is ‘construing’ or providing meaning to the claims of the patent. A recent decision of the Federal Court considered a series of claims which it determined were not possible to be understood – the claims were ambiguous. As a result, the claims were declared invalid.

Declaring claims invalid for being ambiguous is rarely done in Canada. Various decisions have held over the years that claims are invalid for being ambiguous only if it is not possible to give the claim . . . [more]

In July of last year, Canada’s three research-funding agencies set out to improve public and academic access to the studies they sponsor. Open access to research and scholarship is proving to be the digital era’s great gift to science, and all the more so, following open access’ contributions to Covid vaccine development during the pandemic. The plan for Canada’s Tri-Agency, as it is known, was to review and revise its Open Access Policy by identifying “the key features of an effective, comprehensive, sustainable and equitable immediate OA Policy for peer-reviewed articles, and the incentives and supports required for the Policy’s . . . [more]

The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) remains one of the bodies responsible for compliance with Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL).

On April 4, 2023, Canadian police services participated in an internationally coordinated enforcement action against the Genesis Market that traded in stolen credentials and account access. The Genesis Market had over 1.5 million bots and over 2,000,000 identities when it was shut down. It was one of the largest criminal facilitators at the time.

Canadian police worked closely with law enforcement authorities in 17 countries in this coordinated effort. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation led the international operation . . . [more]

As a faculty member of Simon Fraser University, I recently participated in a SFU Faculty Association vote on a motion “calling upon SFU to divest from Israeli commercial interests, suspend partnerships with Israeli universities, and offer concrete support for Palestinian faculty and students.” Such motions have been common across universities around the world during the “situation in Gaza,” as the motion calls it. The inordinate loss of life and suffering of the Israel-Hamas War has led to campus disruptions that have not been seen since the Vietnam War roiled campuses more than half-a century ago (during my student days at . . . [more]