Canada Ip news
An agreement has been reached between Canada and the EU on the terms for a FTA. Topics that are to be further negotiated include food safety, intellectual property, and mutual trade investments. Also on the negotiating table are mutual recognitions of academic qualifications, environmental issues and the free movement of business persons.
With the agreement, a full FTA could be discuss, said Canadian Trade Minister Stockwell Day in Ottawa recently.
There is a great potential benefit to both the EU and Canada as a total of 90 billion Canadian Dollars were traded in 2008. This was an increase of 7% from 2007 and it is expected to increase by another ten percent by 2010. Issues of languages has hampered an early agreement between the two trading blocks, but with the onset of world financial crisis, there has been an urgent need to tie up the FTA as early as possible so that the two sides can tackle other issues.
March 2009.
Canada-US intellectual property relationship-March 2009.
For many years now, Canada has been very positive on the protection of intellectual property as it is a member of many of the international signatories for the protection of IP rights. She is a member of Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a member of Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America as well as a member of WIPO. The previous Canadian government had also introduced legislations to implement many of the WIPO treaties in 2008, but unfortunately was unable to get them through due to a change of government in middle of 2008.
The United States, which has a long border with Canada, is however very concerned with the increasing amount of cross border infiltration of copy righted materials into Canada. This is because there seems to be a lack of enforcement efforts on the Canadian side of the border. Perhaps it has to do with some issues with the Canadian Customs department, which requires a court order for a goods seizure. Getting a court order is no small matter as the claimant side will have to present detailed information on the particular good shipments. Hopefully, something will be done in the future to address such short comings as the amount of goods traded is quite substantial.
Canada to institute new copyright law?
The last time when Canada did put its signatory to any copyright agreement was in 1997. Then, it was a signatory, together with other countries to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) treaties in Geneva. Agreeing to the treaty means that the country concerned must make amendments to its intellectual property laws to those stipulated by WIPO, or to at least reflect on its spirits. It is already twelve years past, and as yet, Canada has not done any amendments to its outdated copy right laws, what more when the present day environment is moving heavily towards the electronic environment.
There have been many calls, from both the music copyright holders and users themselves for Canada to move with the times and to institute new laws to better manage the increase usages of copyrighted mediums. They have been many frayed feathers, especially from the side of the copyright holders, most of them being based in the US, and who had filed many complaints against Canada for not acting against copyright violators. Canada is now on the watch list of the US authority on countries that have allowed the imports of copyrighted materials.
It was in 2001 that Canada last had a public review on copyright laws, but then, there were no iPods, and certainly no mass video file sharing like Bit-Torrents or YouTube to speak of. The environment today is totally different, and might even change totally in the future. Should Canada enact laws that are similar to its neighbor, like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to reign in copyright confusion, or to go for a version that is not so restricting? To give credit to the Canada government, there were two previous occasions when new laws were tabled in parliament, but unfortunately, it did not get to see the light of day due to a change of government then.
August 2, 2009.
Accelerated patent examinations
In an apparent move to speed up the prosecution of patent filings, the Canadian Patent Office struck a deal with the Korean, Danish and Japan patent office to facilitate the exchange of information. The main benefit derived from such an association is to speedily approve patent filings from these countries, besides increasing efficiencies and reducing the workloads. Canada has a similar program with the US, and for the time being, it would not levy a charge for the accelerated examination for patent filings from these countries. It however reserved the right to levy a charge in the future.
October 6, 2009.
The camcorder capital of the world
Which country sells the most camcorder? No, specifically which country has the most bootleg copies recorded using a camcorder! Yes, it is Canada, this according to US movie industry sources. As the US Congress has made it a crime to illegally record movies using a camcorder in US cinemas, cleaver rippers have gone over the border in the north to operate as the laws there are comparatively lax. So far it has been a haven for the bootleggers, and they are doing it without the fear of being brought to court. A surveyed done recently showed that one in five pirated copies have their origins from Canada. In Canada, you can only be convicted of piracy if they can prove that you are going to sell the copy; otherwise, the worst that can happen to you is being kicked out of the theater!
April 11, 2010.
Canada’s obsession with digital locks
Just when will Canada get out of its slumber? After many years of deliberation, Canada has finally tabled its new copy right law in the House of Commons for deliberation. Among the many new rulings was the one on the cracking of digital locks. The new ruling says anyone tempering with digital locks will be deemed breaking the law. But why are they so obsessed with other people’s lock? Was it pressure from Washington? Perhaps. If you buy an item with the lock, and for personal reasons, break it to transfer the file to another format, you would have deemed to have broken the law! Still, there is some good news as you will be allowed to transfer that MP3 file from your hard-disk to your player without having to pay any tax.
June 4, 2010.