When should software and business methods be patentable, if ever? Two courts are currently grappling with this very question. In the United States, the Supreme Court is expected to deliver its decision in Bilski v. Kappos within weeks. In Canada, the Federal Court recently heard oral arguments in Amazon.com, Inc. v. The Attorney General of Canada et al, the Amazon 1-Click appeal. Both cases are likely to shape the patent landscape for years to come.

Previous developments

Previous decisions in Bilski and Amazon both conspicuously broke with established patentability requirements and led to the current appeals. Each discarded earlier . . . [more]

Following on the heels of Ontario’s draconian Road Safety Act (discussed at some length in one of my earlier Slaw posts) The B.C. Liberal government has introduced legislation that would create a Provincial offence for driving with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) between 0.05-0.08 (the Criminal Code legal limit is 0.08). The penalty for a first offender would be a 3-day driving ban plus a $200 fine rising from there for each subsequent offence.

Not to be outdone by Ontario though, B.C.’s law proposes to go a step further by also creating a Provincial offence of driving over 0.08. . . . [more]

The Canadian Privacy Commissioner is in the midst of consultations on the privacy impacts of online tracking, profiling and targeting. The first public event is a panel discussion taking place today correction – Thursday the 29th in Toronto from 8:30 til 4:15. This event is being webcast. Viewers are invited to pose questions to the panelists.

To follow the consultations on twitter the hashtag is #priv2010. The Privacy Commisioner’s office’s twitter handle is @privacyprivee. . . . [more]

In Canada, under s. 48(1) of the Patent Act, a patentee can disclaim portions of an issued patent if “by mistake, accident or inadvertence, and without any willful intent to defraud or mislead the public,” the patentee has “made a specification too broad, claiming more than that of which the patentee… was the inventor.” Disclaimers can be filed to correct errors in patents and can be used to enhance the validity of existing claims by narrowing the claims based on newly discovered prior art. However, patentees should proceed with caution, as disclaimers filed in the wrong manner, or for . . . [more]

As anyone who follows tech will know, a prototype of Apple’s secret (as it then was) next model iPhone escaped into the wild, thanks to a careless employee. It made its way from the finder to the tech blogging site Gizmodo. There the thing of beauty was disassembled and the entrails reported to the public by Jason Chen. Subsequently, California police executed a search warrant and removed material from Mr. Chen’s residence. As I understand it, no criminal charges have been laid against Mr. Chen at this point.

Most of the discussion has debated the legality of the search warrant, . . . [more]

in today’s historic announcement on parliamentary privilege can be found here.

The Speaker’s Rulings website is woefully out of date.

Here are links to coverage by the Globe and CBC. . . . [more]

  and by Jill Jarvis-TonusJill Jarvis-Tonus, B.F.A. (Dramatic Arts), LL.B., leads the New Media/Copyright Practice group for Bereskin & Parr LLP. In recent years, Jill has increasingly worked on copyright and trade mark matters relating to new media products and Internet services, including the drafting of website agreements and other Internet related contracts, the selection and protection of domain names, advising on the infringement of copyrights and trade marks on the internet and privacy law concerns.
[click on the author’s name to go to email and web page links]

Twitter has become a cultural phenomenon, 140 characters at a . . . [more]

The decision in Vinod Chopra Films Private Limited et al. v. John Doe 2010 FC 387 by Hughes, J. concerns a review of a “rolling” Anton Piller order granted by the Federal Court of Canada in a copyright infringement case to an Indian film production company and its Canadian licensee against various un-named persons who (according to the claim) “deal in counterfeit video recordings.”

Pursuant to Justice Zinn’s Order of January 26, 2010, the plaintiffs seized allegedly counterfeit copies of a film entitled “3 Idiots” from a number of defendants who then sought review of the Order.

An Anton Piller . . . [more]

Andrew Weaver, who holds the Canada Research Chair at the University of Victoria’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, launched a defamation action on Monday, naming the National Post and some of its employees and writers as defendants. Dr. Weaver is perhaps Canada’s leading climatologist and has written extensively on global warming. The National Post’s editorial position might be described as that of a warming denier, and the articles of primary concern in the lawsuit were clearly hostile to Dr. Weaver’s position.

I won’t take you through the material here: you can examine the statement of claim for yourself, . . . [more]

In this post , Librarian by Day, Bobbi Newman warns of a recent innovation on Facebook that again raises privacy issues. It will be interesting to see what Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart does with this one, if anything. . . . [more]

Earlier this week, Michel-Adrian Sheppard blogged on Slaw about Google’s new Government Requests Tool (Google Releases Data on Government Requests for Private User Data). I blogged about it as well here. I’m all in favor of pulling this out of the shadows and into the sunlight.

It’s interesting to peruse the numbers and to read the FAQ.

While the information provided raises a bunch of questions, they are very important questions to ask. What are the nature of the demands for customer information? Criminal law or national security? What are the relevant Google products involved? Why . . . [more]

This is a follow-up to my previous post and the discussion that ensued on Quebec Government Bill Upholds Gender Equality and Secularism