Latest Posts

Canadian Chamber of Commerce Justifies Fake Counterfeit Claims With More False Numbers

Earlier this week, I posted on how the Canadian IP Council, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s IP lobby arm, floated false claims about the scope of counterfeiting in Canada in an attempt to bolster claims for increased border measures. That was followed by a post yesterday on Professor Edward Iacobucci’s debunking of the Chamber’s report on Canadian patent law, which he found to be deeply flawed. In response to my first post, the IP Council’s Chris Gray tweeted responses that the Chamber does not want individual travellers searched and that its claim of $30 billion in losses from counterfeiting in Canada comes from a recent International Chamber of Commerce report.

The retraction on border searches of travellers is good news, though the Chamber should seek to publicly correct the Globe and Mail, which reported otherwise. Moreover, given that some of its members have publicly stated their opposition to the de minimis provision in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement – GlaxoSmithKline has said the exclusion of traveller’s luggage “sends out an entirely inappropriate message” – its position on the issue may not be cast in stone.

Even more notable is the suggestion that the Canadian Chamber of Commerce is now basing its $30 billion counterfeiting claim on the 2011 International Chamber of Commerce report.

Read more ›

June 10, 2011 70 comments News

Will Microsoft vs. i4i Patent Case Influence Canadian Law?

Professor Norman Siebrasse on why it won’t: the statute is different, the precedent is different, and the U.S. Supreme Court expressly did not consider policy arguments.

Read more ›

June 10, 2011 2 comments News

Rogers Faces Yet Another Net Neutrality Complaint

Teresa Murphy has filed another complaint against Rogers over its Internet traffic management practices, claiming its alleged fix of problems with World of Warcraft have not worked.

Read more ›

June 10, 2011 Comments are Disabled News

Access Copyright Claims Pay-Per-Use Licences Create Incentive to Infringe

Access Copyright has issued a response to the AUCC complaint over its decision to stop issuing pay-per-use or transactional licences. The complaint arises from requests from universities to license individual works so that they can be used with payment and without risk of copyright infringement. Access Copyright is refusing to issue such licences, offering only a more expensive blanket licence that requires universities to license use of the entire repertoire. The Access Copyright response bizarrely claims that pay-per-use licences actually create incentives to infringe and that blanket licences are more appropriate in the digital economy. Never mind that Access Copyright offers transactional licences to corporate customers. Never mind that millions of cultural products are licensed individually and that the Internet and new technologies make it easier to do so. 

According to Access Copyright, since copying is now easier, a blanket licence is needed to guard against any potential uncompensated use:

Read more ›

June 10, 2011 30 comments News

Study Debunks Chamber of Commerce Claims on Canadian Patent Law

Yesterday I posted on how the Canadian IP Council, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s IP lobby arm, floated false claims about the scope of counterfeiting in Canada in an attempt to bolster claims for increased border measures. The Chamber placed Canadian countefeiting costs at $30 billion per year, a figure that has no basis in fact and that even RCMP no longer supports.

The Chamber’s false claims on counterfeiting are not the only intellectual property issue where their arguments have been debunked as inaccurate.  My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) focuses on the proposed trade agreement between Canada and the European Union, which could have big implications for the costs of pharmaceutical drugs, on which Canadians spend $22 billion annually.

The E.U. is home to many of the world’s big brand name pharmaceutical companies and one of their chief goals is to extend Canada’s intellectual property rules to delay the availability of lower cost generic alternatives. Earlier this year, the Chamber’s IP Council released a report claiming that Canada lags behind other countries and encouraging the Canadian government to follow the European example by extending the term of pharmaceutical patents and “data exclusivity.”

The CIPC (which counts several brand name pharmaceutical companies as members) claims the reforms would lead to increased pharmaceutical research and development in Canada. But last month University of Toronto law professor Edward Iacobucci released a study that thoroughly debunks the CIPC claims, predicting increased consumer costs and noting that there is little evidence the changes would increase employment or research spending. 

Iacobucci’s blunt assessment of the report:

The CIPC Report does not offer objectivity in its assessment of Canada’s patent regime.  It rather is a straightforward piece of advocacy on behalf of the branded pharmaceutical sector. The Report makes no effort to place Canada’s patent law in an international context or address international relations, but instead simply asserts without justification that Canada would suffer if it fails to grant the same concessions to the pharmaceutical industry that the EU and US have made. The flaws in this basic approach undermine each of the CIPC Report’s recommendations. 

Read more ›

June 9, 2011 4 comments Columns