The Canadian government’s Bill C-86, its Budget Implementation Act, features several notable provisions designed to curb intellectual property misuse. I posted yesterday on the rejection of “harmonized” statutory damages with the copyright collective system and new limits on the content of notices under the copyright notice-and-notice rules, with the government banning the inclusion of settlement demands or other requests for payment. Internet providers that receive notices that do not comply with the requirements will not be required to forward them to their subscribers. The bill also takes on patent misuse, including rolling out a framework for regulating patent demand letters in an effort to stop patent trolling.
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Canadian Government Banning Settlement Demands in Copyright Notice-and-Notice System
The Canadian government has unveiled its long-awaited plan to fix abuses with copyright’s notice-and-notice system as part of Bill C-86, its Budget Implementation Act. Last spring, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains released an IP strategy that promised safeguards against intellectual property abuse, particularly use of copyright notices to send settlement demands to Internet users. The Canadian notice-and-notice system was formalized in 2012 to allow rights holders to forward allegations of online copyright infringement to internet users through their internet service provider. The system was viewed as a win-win approach since it promised to deter infringement through education rather than legal threats. Yet within hours of taking effect, anti-piracy companies began sending notices that included settlement demands backed by threats of litigation.
Want to Keep Canadian AI Thriving?: Create a Copyright Exception for Informational Analysis
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met earlier this week with Jean-Francois Gagné, the CEO of Element AI, the Montreal-based applied artificial intelligence lab. Trudeau tweeted that the two men “talked about what Canadians are doing in AI in Montreal & across the country, and how we can keep the industry thriving.”
Maximum Mudslinging: How Powerful Lobby Groups Are Working to Sideline Civil Society Voices on Digital Policy
With just over a year to go before the 2019 Canadian national election, the upcoming fall Parliamentary session will undoubtedly feature a renewed urgency to pass legislative proposals and craft new policies that will form the basis for future election platforms. Digital issues will surely feature prominently including the copyright review and Copyright Board reform, website blocking proposals, privacy safeguards, the broadcast and telecom review, a national data policy, and the implementation of the IP strategy. The same is true elsewhere with Europe to again consider copyright reform, the U.S. assessing privacy rules, and many other countries engaged in digital policy initiatives. However, just as the broader public is finding its voices on these issues with policy submissions, petitions, and efforts to ensure that a public interest perspective is a core part of the process, the traditional lobby groups that have long dominated the policy discourse are steadily working to undermine those efforts with cries of user voices being “mob-driven“, “hacking“, or “disinformation.”
The State of Canadian Wireless in One Chart: No One Has Carriers That Generate More Revenue With Less Usage
Tefficient has released a new report on global wireless market that makes it clear that Canada is a global outlier (or leader if you are a telecom executive). Simply put, no one has carriers that generate more revenue with less usage per SIM than Canada.