My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, freely available version, update: the BBC features an internationalized version) examines the controversy surrounding the Sony rootkit and its use of digital rights management. While in the short-term one of the world's best-known brands has suffered enormous damage, the longer-term implications are […]
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The Court That Gets It
The Supreme Court of Canada yesterday issued its much-anticipated (by trademarks practitioners anyway) decision in the trademark battle between Mega Blocks and Lego (the case is formally known as kirkbi ag v. ritvik holdings inc.) The unanimous court found for Mega Blocks, ending Lego' s attempts to use trademark law […]
Federal Court Issues Reasons for Anti-Net Hate Injunction
The Federal Court has issued its reasons for issuing an injunction against a series of Internet hate postings. In Canadian Human Rights Commission v. Winnicki, the presiding judge had seemingly little difficulty in finding that: 1. The speech at issue constituted hate speech and thus was unlawful.2. The Supreme Court […]
Net Governance Deal May Not End Debate
The BBC features my op-ed column (BBC version, website version) focusing on this week’s WSIS Internet governance agreement. Much like yesterday’s blog posting, I argue that the outcome reflects the bargaining position of the United States and the European Union, but that the deal may not be as lopsided as […]
The WSIS Deal
There is considerable coverage this morning (or this evening in Tunis) on the last minute WSIS deal struck yesterday. The gist of the coverage rightly reports that the U.S. emerged with the compromise they were looking for as the delegates agreed to retain ICANN and the ultimate U.S. control that […]