Trends, analysis and insights in IP Law
On June 28, 2021, the newly instituted College of Patent Agents and Trademark Agents (“CPATA”) began operations as the professional regulator of patent and trademark agents. The organization is the fruit of more than a decade of work and is an important milestone under Canada’s Intellectual Property Strategy.
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The Federal Court recently released its decision in Winkler v. Hendley, 2021 FC 498 [Winkler] in which it found that an author who claims to have published a non-fictional work cannot later claim that the work was in fact fictional in order to get around the principle that facts are not protected by copyright law.
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The Madrid Protocol is celebrating its second anniversary in Canada! Since it came into effect on June 17, 2019, Canadian businesses have more than one string to their bow to protect their trademarks in Canada and internationally. This is the first article in the series on the Madrid Protocol in Canada; it will focus specifically on international filings made by Canadian companies.
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In Part I of this blog post, I explained what a reaction video is, how it could constitute copyright infringement under the Copyright Act, and how the possible legal exception for “criticism” or “review” might apply to a reaction video. In Part II of this blog post, I further analyze this exception through both a Canadian and U.S. legal lens (no pun intended).
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In May 2021, CIPO added upwards of 60 cannabis- and marijuana-related terms to the Goods and Services Manual (the “Manual”).
Most of the new terms fall into Nice Classes 3 (non-medicated toiletry preparations), 5 (pharmaceuticals), and 30 (foodstuffs of plant origin). However, new terms have also been added in Class 16 (namely “printed publications in the field of cannabis”), 42 (“scientific research in the field of cannabis”) and 45 (“legal research in the field of cannabis”).
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