An Order in Council has fixed December 30th as the day on which Division 16 of Part 5 of the Budget Implementation Act, 2022, No. 1 comes into force to extend certain terms of copyright protection from 50 years to 70 years after the life of the author. Continue reading Copyright
Monthly Archives: November 2022
TMOB
CIPO has announced a consultation on Trademark Opposition Board procedures, including costs awards, confidentiality and case management. Continue reading TMOB
US Supreme Court
Earlier today, the US Supreme Court agreed to take up Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc. v. VIP Products LLC on “whether humorous use of another’s trademark as one’s own on a commercial product is subject to the Lanham Act’s traditional likelihood-of-confusion analysis, or instead receives heightened First Amendment protection from trademark-infringement claims”. The defendant sells a “Bad Spaniels” squeaky dog toy.
Supreme Court
Today, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Nova Chemicals Corp. v. Dow Chemical Co., 2022 SCC 43 regarding the quantification of an accounting of profits as a result of patent infringement. The majority dismissed the appeal with a focus on the ‘non-infringing option’: “a non-infringing option helps courts isolate the profits causally attributable to the invention from the profits which arose at the same time the infringing product was used or sold, but which are not causally attributable to the invention.” The majority also upheld springboard profits, saying, “a portion of such post-expiry profits may be causally attributable to infringement of the invention.” Continue reading Supreme Court
US Supreme Court
On Friday, the US Supreme Court granted review in two IP cases:
- Amgen Inc. v. Sanofi – on patent enablement and whether the full scope of the patent has to be enabled.
- Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International – on the scope of the Lanham Act on extraterritorial sales that never reach the United States or confuse US consumers.