Free Video Lecture on Canadian IP
The Court, a blog where Canadian scholars, practitioners and law students comment on recent decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada, has posted a free video lecture by David Vaver, Professor of Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law, University of Oxford.
The video lecture assesses how the Supreme Court is interpreting Canada’s intellectual property laws and how its decisions may affect legislative policy. The lecture further notes that the Supreme Court has become more interested and competent in this field than was the case even a couple of decades ago. Two decisions of the Court, Compo Co. Ltd. v. Blue Crest Music et al. (1979), [1980] 1 S.C.R. 357 and Euro-Excellence Inc. v. Kraft Canada Inc, 2007 SCC 37 are particularly compared.
The posting at The Court notes that this lecture was first delivered on Oct. 24th, 2007 when Osgoode Hall Law School welcomed back one of its former faculty members to deliver the Lewtas Lecture. During the question period after the talk, Professor Vaver shared his thoughts on additional topics, including the place of anti-circumvention provisions of Technological Protection Measures (TPMs) in copyright law, the ability of IP law to deal with technological changes, and the use of IP law to support business models.
I think it fantastic that Osgoode Hall Law School has put up this video lecture, especially since such free video lectures about Canadian intellectual property law are very rare. Actually, it may even be the first free webcast video lecture on Canadian IP (if anyone knows of any others, please email me).
The video is just under 1 hour and 15 minutes in lenght.