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In Hidden Assets: Helping Your Clients Unlock Their Intellectual Property Assets, Nyall Engfield explains the value of trademarks, patents and copyright, and explains how intellectual property assets can be leveraged in your business to produce revenue.
Nyall Engfield is vindicated in his complaint of ID-scanning in Calgary nightclubs. Read the recent decision of the Information and Privacy Commissioner.
In Patent is Music to Firm's Ears, the Financial Post's David George-Cosh writes on the importance of patents to businesses.
In The Rights of Creators, Bill Freeman discusses a bill to bring Copyright Law into the Internet Age.
• May 17-21, 2008 - INTA Annual Meeting in Berlin, Germany
Partner Mike Andrews and associates Scott Pratt and Nyall Engfield will be in attendance on behalf
of Andrews Robichaud.
• January 14th, 2008 - Nyall Engfield is interviewed by the CBC for a privacy complaint he filed with the Alberta Privacy Commissioner, regarding the practice of bars scanning their patrons' driver's licenses.
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December 2007 - Scott Pratt married his fiancé Philippa on the beach in Fiji. Congratulations Scott and Pippa! Scott met with clients and associates while in Australia yet still managing to surf most mornings. The happy couple returned to Ottawa only to shovel almost two feet of snow just to open the door!
• Partner Mike Andrews is quoted extensively in the Ottawa Business Journal's article of September 26, 2007, on IP licensing.
He says, he says: Pure-play vs. in-house R&D
Registration of Corporate Names is No Defence to Trademark Infringement Claims
Supreme Court of Canada Rulings Expose Famous Trade-mark Owners to Loss of Protection in Canada
• June 23, 2008 - The Naked Cowboy lawsuit against the maker of M&Ms is permitted to go ahead by a U.S. District Court judge. The street performer who calls himself the Naked Cowboy is a fixture in Times Square, where he plays his guitar naked while giggling tourists take snapshots and put money in his boots. In the suit he alleges that Mars, the maker of M&Ms candy, used an M&M candy dressed up as the Naked Cowboy in a commercial without his permission, falsely leading others to believe that he had endorsed M&Ms.
• May 7, 2008 - Germany-based Adidas AG scores a huge victory of over $300-million in damages in its fight to prevent abuse of its three-stripe trademark, this time against Payless Shoesource. Payless was selling two- and four-stripe shoes which it claimed did not infringe the trademark, but Adidas' lawyers argued successfully that these deigns could cause confusion or dilution of Adidas' three-stripe trademark. Next round? Adidas vs. Wal-mart.
February 18, 2008 - Canada-based Research in Motion is suing Motorola claiming its rival infringed on several of its patents as well as charging it exorbitant licensing fees.
• Febuary 13, 2008 - Montreal movie bootlegger Gérémi Adam, known to his fans as MaVen, is accused of violating the Copyright Act for copying and distributing copies of films How to Eat Fried Worms and Invincible. He was well-known by consumers of film bootlegs as producing among the best-quality bootlegs, without the usual glitches such as recording of chatter, or other moviegoers' heads appearing on-film.
• January 18, 2008 - In Apple Canda Inc. v. the Canadian Private Copying Collective, 2008 FCA 9, the Canadian Private Copying Collective sought the right to collect a tariff on digital audio recorders. Justice Sharlow considers that the principle established in Canadian Private Copying Collective v. Canadian Storage Media Alliance (C.A.), [2005] 2 F.C.R. 654 is dispositive of the issue, and she reads that case as authority for the proposition that the Copyright Board has no legal authority to certify a tariff on digital audio recorders or on the memory permanently embedded in digital audio recorders. Therefore, the case is sent back to the Copyright Board for reconsideration in accordance with those reasons.
• November 9, 2007 - Research in Motion has launched a lawsuit against LG Electronics, claiming its "Black Cherry" model of "Chocolate" cell phones infringes its Blackberry mark. RIM is also looking to gain exclusive control of "Berry" in the telecom industry. RIM has launched other similar suits and some surmise that its bellicosity over the Blackberry name is an effort to prevent Blackberry from becoming the generic name for wireless email. This can result in a loss of trademark protection, such as happened to Kleenex in the past.
• November 9, 2007 - The Motion Picture Association of America is enlisting the help of two Labradors, Lucky and Flo, that have been trained to smell polycarbonate and other chemicals found in optical discs such as DVDs. Apparently they cannot yet tell the difference between contraband and legal DVDs, but they have been finding successful at finding an inordinate number of packages containing dog food.
Photo Credit: Courtesy Of Uk Fact And Mpaa Photo
• November 7, 2007 - U.S. Patent and Trademark Office have been asked for depositions in the lawsuits over the Rules changes. The Rules changes, limiting patent applications to 25 claims and 5 independent claims, were to come into effect by November 1, 2007, but were stopped by an injunction issued at the 11th hour.
Director Jon Dudas, Commissioner for Patents John Doll, Deputy Commissioner for Patent Examination Policy John Love, and Senior Patent Attorney Robert Bahr in the Office of Patent Examination Policy were all given notices of deposition.
• On October 31, 2007, an injunction was issued against the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to prevent it from limiting the number of claims in a patent, in a case brought by GlaxoSmithKline. The USPTO had proposed to limit applications to 25 claims and 5 independent claims, changes scheduled to take effect on November 1, 2007. The court in enjoining the USPTO determined that there was a possibility that the USPTO had exceeded its authority in limiting claims, and that giving these limits retroactive effect could adversely affect the rights of applicants, that they would be, in effect, changing the deal. Overall, while the patent rules have not changed and will continue as they were, future developments in the USPTO will be closely watched and reported here.
• According to the October 16, 2007 Throne Speech, the Canadian Government will support Canadian researchers and innovators in developing new ideas and bringing them to the marketplace through Canada’s Science and Technology Strategy. The Government will also improve the protection of cultural and intellectual property rights in Canada, including copyright reform.
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