Copyright - News

  • Canada Post v Geolytica Lawsuit Settled
    – 2016-06-03 –

    Canada Post has agreed to discontinue it's copyright infringement lawsuit against Geolytica.  The case involved a claim that Geloytica's use of a crowd-sourced database of postal codes mapped to geographic addresses infringed intellectual property rights Canada Post alleged that it enjoyed in those postal codes.

    While the terms of settlement are confidential, the parties have prepared an agreed statement:

    Canada Post commenced court proceedings in 2012 against Geolytica Inc. for copyright infringement in relation to Geolytica Inc.'s Canadian Postal Code Geocoded Dataset and related services offered on its website at geocoder.ca. The parties have now settled their dispute and Canada Post will discontinue the court proceedings. The postal codes returned by various geocoder interface APIs and downloadable on geocoder.ca, are estimated via a crowdsourcing process. They are not licensed by geocoder.ca from Canada Post, the entity responsible for assigning postal codes to street addresses. Geolytica continues to offer its products and services, using the postal code data it has collected via a crowdsourcing process which it created.

    While undoubtedly a good outcome for Geolytica, the settlement leaves unaddressed the legal claims advanced by Canada Post.

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  • CIPPIC and CIPP File Amicus Application in NAFTA Arbitration
    – 2016-02-12 –

    CIPPIC and the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy at McGill University have together applied for amicus curae status in Eli Lilly v. Government of Canada UNCT/14/2, a NAFTA trade dispute before an arbitration tribunal.

    At issue is whether Canada's utility standard under patent law meets Canada's obligations under North American Free Trade Agreement.  The Complainant, the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, claims that it does not.  When a Federal Court judge invalidated one of its patent registration for failing Canada's legal test for "utility" - an essential requirement of any valid patent - Eli Lilly claimed that it was entitled to a remedy under NAFTA's investor protection provisions.

    Most trade agreements these days include these investor protection provisions.  This case marks the expansion of the use of these provisions from cases that look more like state expropriation to the general contours of substantive intellectual property law.  The Tribunal is being asked to challenge the court's supervisory role over patentability in the Canadian patent system and to take an expansive view of the content of NAFTA's patent provisions.

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  • TekSavvy Succeeds in Appeal of Voltage Costs Order
    – 2015-12-10 –

    TekSavvy Solutions Inc., the ISP targeted by Voltage PIctures in its motion for the identities of roughly 2000 subscribers whom Voltage alleges have infringed copyright in Voltage films, has succeeded in its appeal of its cost award in that motion.  In an earlier motion, TekSavvy had been awarded $21,577.50 as its "reasonable legal costs, administrative costs, and disbursements".  On appeal, that figure was raised by an additional $11,822.50. 

    As a result of this decision, and assuming the parties seek no further appeal, after paying these costs to TekSavvy (assuming it chooses to do so), Voltage will be in a position to provide a draft of proposed communications to targeted Subscribers and request the Court to convene a case conference with the Federal Court Case Management Review judge to approve the contents of the letter. 

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  • Supreme Court Releases Decision in CBC v. SODRAC 2003 Inc., 2015 SCC 57
    – 2015-11-26 –
    In a 7-2 decision, the Court upheld the Copyright Board's decision to characterize broadcast-incidental copies as "reproductions" for the purposes of the Copyright Act, but overturned the Board's method of calculating fees payable for such activities.  The majority found no reason to depart from long-standing caselaw on the character of ephemeral copies as reproductions for the purposes of the Act, and concluded that the separation of synchronization and broadcast‑incidental licences does not offend technological neutrality or impose new layers of protection or fees based solely on technological change.  However, the majority concluded that the Board failed to consider the principles of technological neutrality and balance in valuing the ephemeral licence.  The Court concluded that balance between user and right‑holder interests requires that the Board assess the respective contributions of the user and the copyright‑protected works to the value enjoyed by the user.
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  • Open Letter calling on Industry Minister Moore to fix flaws in Notice-Notice system
    – 2015-04-22 –

    CIPPIC and a number of other civil society groups and experts has put out an open letter to Industry Minister James Moore, highlighting a roadmap for how to fix a number of loopholes in Canada's Notice-Notice copyright regime. The Notice-Notice regime was enacted with the objective of creating a minimally intrusive mechanism for rights holders to contact alleged infringers. However, it is being exploited by some rights holders to send settlement demands that are unreasonable. Typical abusive notices include extravagant demands for damages well in excess of what would be available under Canada's Copyright Act, and might be sent without meaningful corroboration that the threatened recipient is actually the rights infringer. Some also include threats that the recipient will have her Internet access account terminated if they do not pay up. Third parties often flood ISPs with notices in a 'scattershot' approach not designed to facilitate an actual lawsuit based on proof of wrongdoing, but rather to encourage recipients to pay in order to make the matter go away - a highly questionable monetization technique. While rights infringers should not be able to hide behind ISPs in order to justify conduct, the current model is being abused to inappropriately threaten individuals who, often, have done nothing wrong at all.

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  • CIPPIC Intervenes in Supreme Court Case on Copyright and Technological Neutrality
    – 2015-03-12 –

    CIPPIC is intervening an important Supreme Court case about copyright and technological neutrality. CBC v SODRAC concerns royalties payable by broadcasters for digital copies of music embedded in the production and broadcast of television programs. The Court’s decision could have implications for the way in which all Canadians access and pay for digital content, including music, movies and television programs, e-books, and many other online materials.  Professor Jeremy de Beer and CIPPIC Director David Fewer will appear in the case on behalf of CIPPIC. The hearing takes place on Monday, March 16, 2015, and will be webcast. Common Law students Jillian Brenner, Chelsey Colbert, Parineeta Chahal, Tracey Doyle, Laura Garcia, Grace Ko, Laura MacDonald, Samantha Peters, Sadegh Fattah, Laura Garcia and Mayuran Sivagurunathan have all assisted in preparations for the case.

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  • CIPPIC Granted Leave to Intervene in CBC v SODRAC
    – 2015-02-11 –

    CIPPIC has been granted leave to intervene before the Supreme Court of Canada in CBC v. SODRAC.  The case involves the interpretation of the reproduction right and its application to so-called "ephemeral copies" - copies of works for the purposes of facilitating the creation and transmission of broadcasts.  CIPPIC's intervention will focus on the role of the principle of technological neutrality in interpreting the reproduction right.

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  • Voltage v. Doe Returns to Federal Court for Teksavvy Costs Motion
    – 2014-12-08 –
    The Federal Court has heard Teksavvy's motion for "all reasonable legal costs, administrative costs and disbursements" arising from voltage's order that Teksavvy disclose the identies of those of its subscribers whose IP addresses Voltages alleges that it has identified downloading copyright materials.  The motion springs from Prothonotary Aalto's February 20, 2014, decision granting Voltage a Norwich order compelling Teksavvy to provide requested subscriber information provided that certain conditions and safeguards were met.  One of those conditions involved Voltage's payment of Teksavvy's "reasonable legal costs, administrative costs and disbursements".  Teksavvy has submitted a bill of costs in the amount of $346,480.68.  voltage opposes the amount as "outrageous".
     
    Teksavvy's Record
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  • Copyright Intermediary Notice and Notice System to Come Into Force without Regulations
    – 2014-06-17 –

    The Canadian government has announced that it will bring into force the Notice and Notice provisions of the Copyright Modernization Act without regulations. These provisions provide that for a notice to be valid it must meet certain form and content requirements. The government's decision not to prescribe these requirements leaves it to the various affected industries to develop their own standards. CIPPIC had participated in earlier consultations on the notice and notice system, calling for checks and balances within regulations that would curtail the potential for abuse and make the system as a whole fairer and more transparent.

    The notice and notice system will come into force six months following the publication of the Order in Council in the Canada Gazette.

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  • Federal Court Releases its Decision in Voltage v. Doe
    – 2014-02-20 –

    In late 2012, Voltage Pictures sued over 2000 filesharers for sharing copies of Voltage's films over Bittorrent. To identify the alleged infringers, Voltage had to file a motion asking the court to order an Internet Service Provider (ISP), Teksavvy, to hand over the subscriber identities linked to the sharing activity.

    In early 2013, CIPPIC was granted leave to intervene in that motion. CIPPIC's interest in the case stemmed from its desire to (1) ensure that the test for disclosing identities associated with anonymous internet activity remains sufficiently robust to protect high-value speech, such as whistle-blowing and online criticism, and (2) ensure that copyright trolls did not set up shop in Canada, employing taxpayer-funded Canadian courts as tools in a shakedown scheme that has emerged in the United States and England.

    The Federal Court's decision, released February 20, 2014, offers aggrieved copyright owners a carefully calibrated tool for seeking redress for good faith claims of copyright infringement while at the same time trying to slam the door on copyright trolls. The Court has asserted that these sorts of proceedings will go forward as a "specially managed proceeding", subject to robust judicial oversight designed to ferret out abuses, protect privacy, and deter profiteering in the name of copyright infringement.

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