Tag Archives: Intellectual Property

3D printer revolution

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Today’s Slaw post:

3D printing has become a popular topic lately.  While 3D printers that print objects similar to how ink jet printers print words have been around for many years, the cost has come down dramatically, and will continue to come down. 

3-D printers are a disruptive technology, and as with any disruptive technology, the law will have to react to issues that come with it.  Possible issues include intellectual property, product liability, and use for criminal purposes.

There has been a lot of negative press lately about using 3D printing to create plastic guns.  To me that says more about the US gun culture than 3D printing.  Like most technologies, 3D printers can be used for good and evil.  And like most new technologies, it will take a while for the real uses to emerge.

Home 3D printers are now available, but we are a long way from having one in every house.  They are becoming accessible though – the office supply chain Staples recently announced it will provide 3-D printing services at its stores in Belgium and the Netherlands. Here are some examples of what a basic 3D printer can do.

3D printers have been a boon to engineers and architects, who have used rapid prototyping techniques for many years.  This article talks about how Ford uses 3D printing to create prototype metal parts such as transmission parts and brake rotors.

3D printing is being used to manufacture parts with complex shapes.   This new more fuel efficient jet engine uses 3D printed metal nozzles that are lighter in weight due to an advanced design producible only on 3D printers.

3D printing also has intriguing medical possibilities.  3D printed body parts – using live tissue – is a real possibility.  And it has been used to create relatively inexpensive replacement hands.  This video about the Robohand is well worth the 10 minute investment.

http://harrisonpensa.com/lawyers/david-canton 

 

European Parliament votes against ACTA

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Today’s Slaw post:

Over the last few years there has been much controversy over the negotiation of the international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA. Problems included that it was being negotiated in secret with little information being disclosed, lobby groups were granted unequal access, and the substance of the agreement proposed heavy handed enforcement.

It was signed last October, but apparently needs to be ratified by a certain number of signatories before it comes into effect. And even after that, the substantive provisions of international treaties such as this are not binding on individuals in any country until that country adopts laws that are consistent with the treaty.

Michael Geist reports that, while it is not dead yet:

the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly against the agreement, effectively killing ACTA within the EU. The vote was 478 against, 39 in favour, with 165 abstentions This is a remarkable development that was virtually unthinkable even a year ago. Much credit goes to the thousands of Europeans who spoke out against ACTA and to the Members of the European Parliament who withstood enormous political pressure to vote against the deal.

Remarkable indeed.

http://harrisonpensa.com/lawyers/david-canton/

What’s that sound? A trademark

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For the London Free Press – May 14, 2012 – Read this on Canoe

A movie studio’s roaring success opened the door for sounds to be trademarked

When one thinks of trademarks, the usual things that come to mind are word marks (the name of a company or product such as “Harrison Pensa” or “President’s Choice”) or design marks (the logo for a company or product such as the Ford blue oval or the McDonald’s arches).

Trademarks can also be registered for colour applied to an object (such as the Nerds On Site red cars, or the UPS brown delivery vehicles). And now we can register sounds as trademarks.

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) recently announced that it will accept applications for sound marks.

Sounds have been registrable as trademarks in the United States and other countries for some time. CIPO’s new position on accepting sound marks results from a long battle by Metro Goldwyn Mayer to register its roaring lion sound.

CIPO’s resistance to registering sound marks apparently arose because the wording of the trademarks act requires marks other than word marks to be filed as a drawing. Sound marks simply didn’t fit into the act’s registration requirements.

Many large brands have distinct sounds that form an important part of their television, radio and Internet advertising campaigns. It is logical that they should be able to file for a trademark for those, as they are no less of a brand than its word mark, logo or colour.

Indeed, sounds that don’t rely on language can become a powerful universal international brand.

We all recognize, for example, the MGM roar at the beginning of a movie, the NBC chimes on television shows and the Intel sound on computer ads.

An applicant for a sound mark registration will have to follow strict rules on the form of the application. It will also have to comply with requirements that apply to trademark registrations generally, such as not being descriptive, and not confusing with existing marks.

Applicants will need to file a recording of the sound, along with a description of the sound and a drawing representing the sound.

Now that these types of applications will be accepted, it will be interesting to see which companies rush to register their sounds in Canada, and how CIPO will approach its decisions regarding which sounds they will accept and which they will not.

http://harrisonpensa.com/lawyers/david-canton 

 

Terms of use needs balance

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For the London Free Press – April 2, 2012 – Read this on Canoe

Have you ever considered what a service provider – such as a cellphone company or social networking site – can do with the photos and other content you send or post using that service?

Sometimes the terms of use of the service provider are so broad they give the provider the right to use it for things such as their advertising, or to be able to sell user content for the service provider’s own gain.

Terms of use, or terms of service, are the rules we agree to when we contract to use a service. That might take the form of a written contract we sign when we purchase a cellphone, or the click-wrap agreement we click “I agree” to when we subscribe to a social media service such as Facebook or Pinterest.

Terms of use often include some form of licence or permission language stating what the provider can do with content users send or post using the service. Defining that is important to make clear what rights the service provider has to that content. In most circumstances, that licence language should grant the service provider rights to the content that it reasonably requires to provide its services.

Occasionally, these licence permissions are drafted overly broad and grant the service provider the right to do almost anything it wants with the content.

For example a cellphone provider was recently criticized for language that said it: “will be free to copy, disclose, distribute, incorporate and otherwise use the content and all data, images, sounds, text, and other things embodied therein for any and all commercial or non-commercial purposes.”

In most cases, such overly broad language is not a nefarious plot to acquire user content for the service provider’s own use or profit. It is more likely the result of contract drafting that has not been thought through properly.

The drafter was rightly thinking the terms of use needed some licence language to define what the service provider can do with the user’s content. And the language does indeed give the service provider the rights it needs. So from that perspective the clause works.

But the clause is a failure because it grants rights that the service provider doesn’t need, and doesn’t want. And it fails to look at the issue from the perspective of what uses a user would be comfortable granting to the service provider.

In other words, the clause does not balance the rights and needs of the parties.

So why would a service provider care, given that most people don’t bother to read terms of use?

Some people do read them, and eventually the language will end up being publicly criticized. That doesn’t bode well for the reputation of the service provider, and it may never know how many potential users voted with their feet and didn’t use their service because of the overly broad language.

Stop SOPA – PIPA protest

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That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows.

Here are some of the sites that are going dark today, or changing their home pages in protest over the proposed US legislation. For more information on why this legislation is so bad, check out these sites, or search for “SOPA” on Slaw or Techdirt.com, or just Google it.

Wikipedia:

Boing Boing

WordPress

EFF

This is Google’s US site. Google’s Canadian homepage does not seem to be affected.

Michael Geist

 

Why Sopa & Protect-ip are bad ideas

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There is proposed legislation in the US that would give broad rights to block entire web sites based on mere allegations that a small part of it might have some infringing content.   The legislation is backed by the entertainment industry as an anti-piracy measure.  There is a groundswell of opposition against the legislation, but it is still very possible that it could become law.

Mike Masnick of Techdirt has a great article explaining in detail what the problem is.

 

 

Tablet Wars

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That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows. 

Simon’s post earlier today mentioned the Apple vs Samsung patent lawsuits over tablets and smartphones. The reference to 2001 as prior art is amusing – lets not forget the Star Trek PADD as well. There is actually a Star Trek PADD app for the iPad.

Simon linked to a list of the various lawsuits between Apple and Samsung in various countries. Here is a graphic produced by Reuters that shows patent related suits between mobile manufacturers.

There is market share and a lot of money at stake here. A big reason behind the Google aquisition of Motorola was for its patents. The recent purchase of Nortel patents by a consortium including Apple, Microsoft and RIM for billions of dollars also attests to that.

Many (myself included) believe that smartphones and tablets are causing and will continue to cause revolutionary change in the way we work and go about our lives. Consider the following examples:

United Airlines and Apple announced that the airline will deploy 11,000 iPads for its pilots to replace paper flight manuals with electronic flight bags, or EFBs. This is expected to save 16 million sheets of paper and 326,000 gallons of jet fuel a year.

This CNET video lists the top 5 things that the smartphone replaces. MP3 player, personal planner, digital point and shoot camera, portable GPS, alarm clocks. Also video cameras, newspapers, landlines, books.

This All Things D article talks about how iPads are replacing cash registers.

 

Food for thought: Apple v Samsung lawsuit, and the state of broadband in Canada

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That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows.

Apple has sued Samsung claiming that Samsung’s tablets violate Apple tablet patents. Some of the features in question are actually part of the Android operating system, not just the tablet itself. In Australia, sales of Samsung’s new Galaxy Tab 10.1 are on hold pending court action. Setting aside the legal issues, and the debate over whether such patents are a good or bad thing for innovation, consider this point of view by Mike Masnick of Techdirt:

But, really, all Apple has done with this lawsuit is to signal to the world (loudly) that hey, we’re really freaking scared that Samsung has built a better product than we have.

Author Peter Nowak has published an article entitled “CRTC is peddling broadband Kool-Aid” that suggests that the state of broadband in Canada is not as rosy as the CRTC paints it. A CRTC report suggests that prices and speeds in Canada compare well against other countries. Peter points out that this was a result of comparing to only 8 countries. And that another report puts Canada in about 33rd place for download speeds, and 65th place for upload speeds. His conclusion:

The bottom line is Canada can’t even try to aspire to an innovation-based economy without first making sure it has proper upload speeds. This hasn’t occurred yet to the CRTC, which is obviously too busy peddling its Kool-Aid vision of a country with wonderful broadband.

For those on Google+, take a look at the comments on a post by Jacob Glick on this article where the consensus is that upload speeds increasing matter in a world where we are using cloud computing, and posting photos and video.

European Patent Office says Amazon “one-click” too obvious to patent

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OUT-LAW news, a publication of the Pinsent Masons law firm, reports that the European Patent Office has rejected the Amazon “one-click” patent application.   The subject is a one-click shopping cart to reduce the amount of input one has to make on subsequent orders.

The US courts narrowed the scope of Amazons’s original patent claims, but ultimately allowed the patent.  In Canada, the Federal court allowed the patent last fall – but is has been appealed.

I’m not a patent lawyer, so weighing in here with my thoughts might be dangerous, but IMHO, the European Patent Office has it right.

Thorough search averts lawsuit

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For the London Free Press -  July 4, 2011 – Read this on Canoe

You have designed the perfect logo for your business. Before investing more time and money in using and promoting your new logo, you want to make sure you have the right to use this trademark for a long time and you’re not infringing someone else’s existing trademark.

You start by doing a search of existing registered trademarks in the database of trademark registrations on the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) website.

The search doesn’t turn up any similar marks relating to the wares and services you provide, so you file a trademark application. A few months later a CIPO examiner approves your application. CIPO then publishes your application in the Trademarks Journal to allow the public an opportunity to oppose it.

Two months pass without a challenge to your application and the trademark is successfully registered.

You are now the first person to register that trademark in Canada for your wares and services. You now have exclusive Canada-wide rights to use this logo for the next 15 years. Or do you?

In a recent decision from the Supreme Court of Canada, the registered trademarks of a retirement company in Ottawa were invalidated because of the likelihood of confusion with similar unregistered trademarks of a company in Calgary that had used them before the Ottawa company.

The Trademarks Act prohibits the registration of a trademark that is confusing with a trademark previously used in Canada, regardless of whether that trademark has been registered.

However, some people thought the test for confusion took into account the geographic region of the operations associated with the trademark. For example, if a Calgary-based retirement residence did not operate in Ontario, its trademarks would not be considered confusing with trademarks of a retirement residence in Ottawa.

The Supreme Court in Masterpiece v Alvida determined the Trademarks Act affords Canada-wide rights even if a trademark is only used locally.

The test is based on the assumption both trademarks under consideration are used in the same area. It was irrelevant the operations of the companies were in different provinces.

The companies had similar trademarks in the same industry, so the trademarks were deemed confusing. Since the unregistered trademark was used prior to registration and use of the registered mark, the registration was expunged.

This demonstrates importance of conducting searches for unregistered trademarks before filing a trademark application. It may be difficult to locate every potentially confusing unregistered trademark throughout Canada, but search services are available that perform reasonably comprehensive searches.

The case also demonstrates the usefulness of registering trademarks as early as possible. In this case, if the Calgary company had registered its marks when it first used them, it would have prevented the Ottawa company from registering its mark, thus avoiding a costly and time-consuming court battle.