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Monday September 13, 2010 |
In recent years, several lobby groups (along with the U.S. government)
have worked extremely hard to convince the Canadian public that
Canadian intellectual property laws are substandard, leading to claims
that investment in Canada is harmed because of our legal
framework. Bill C-32 is obviously a response to that pressure, yet a new
report
from the World Economic Forum - not exactly a group of radical
extremists - has found that executives actually rank Canadian
intellectual property protection ahead of the United States, the United
Kingdom, Japan, and most of Europe. The WEF's Global
Competitiveness
Report ranked Canada 13th for IP protection, including
anti-counterfeiting measures. That is ahead of Australia (14th),
Norway (16th), United Kingdom (17th), Japan (21st), and the United
States (24th). Moreover, the 13th place rank represents an improvement
from 18th last year.
The number are not scientific. Rather, they are the result of the
World Economic Forum's Executive Survey. In other words, once we
get
past the lobby spin about what company's think of Canadian IP laws, the
executives themselves rank Canada ahead of the very countries we are
told we need to emulate. None of this suggests that we should not
engage in IP reform, including copyright reform. There is a need
for
change to Canadian copyright. But reform should proceed on the
basis
of the national interest and maintaining the copyright balance, not as
a result of the attempts to paint Canada as an international laggard
whose reputation is harmed by its legal framework.
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Monday June 07, 2010 |
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The Canadian Press reports that Spain's ambassador to Canada has identified intellectual property rights as a key stumbling block to a Canada - EU Trade Agreement. Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareMonday June 07, 2010 |
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Friday April 30, 2010 |
The U.S. government has released its annual Special 301 report in which it purports to identify those countries with inadequate intellectual property laws. Given the recent history and the way in which the list is developed, it will come as no surprise that the U.S. is again implausibly claiming that Canada is among the worst of the worst. As a starting point, it should be noted that the Canadian government does not take this exercise particularly seriously. As an official with the Department of Foreign Affairs once told a House of Commons committee:
In regard to the watch list, Canada does not recognize the 301 watch list process. It basically lacks reliable and objective analysis. It's driven entirely by U.S. industry. We have repeatedly raised this issue of the lack of objective analysis in the 301 watch list process with our U.S. counterparts.
This year's report is particularly embarrassing for the U.S. since it not only lacks in credible data, but ignores the submission from CCIA (which represents some of the world's largest technology and Internet companies including Microsoft, Google, T-Mobile, Fujitsu, AMD, eBay, Intuit, Oracle, and Yahoo) that argued that it is completely inappropriate to place Canada on the list. The technology giants reminded the USTR that "Canada’s current copyright law and practice clearly satisfy the statutory 'adequate and effective' standard. Indeed, in a number respects, Canada's laws are more protective of creators than those of the United States."
With respect to the actual data, the USTR report is largely rhetoric rather than reality. The reality is:
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Friday April 02, 2010 |
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PIJIP has pulled out the USTR's IP complaints found in the 2010 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers (NTE). 71 countries are targeted for complaint in the report. Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareFriday April 02, 2010 |
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