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Recent Posts
- Research in Motion’s Opportunity to Promulgate Freedom
- Bill C-32: The Latest Attempt to Amend the Copyright Act
- Interpreting the NHL and the disallowed Sedin goal
- The Speciation of Web Sites
- Library Manifesto
- Technology (law) is everywhere!
- How to save a drowning business
- Information is the Good, the Currency, and the Era
- Opening the Scope of Employee Contribution
- On Virtual Travel
- Who carries your Web 2.0 banner?
- Laws for the Virtual Universe
- The Value of Liberal Arts in a Recession
- Richard Stallman came to Vancouver, and I upset him
- Does WOM or Social Network Marketing Create Agency?
Recent Comments
- Jeremy Costin on Research in Motion’s Opportunity to Promulgate Freedom
- Alexander Finger on Research in Motion’s Opportunity to Promulgate Freedom
- Fran on Research in Motion’s Opportunity to Promulgate Freedom
- Jeremy Costin on RIAA and MPAA hijack the border (or someone like them)
- Matthew Anderson on RIAA and MPAA hijack the border (or someone like them)
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Tag Archives: Intellectual Property
Library Manifesto
the risk of common cultural property becoming the puppet, through digital means, of copyright holders rather than the protectorate of library gatekeepers Continue reading
Technology (law) is everywhere!
At the firm where I’m working, I deal a lot with wills & estates, family law, and small business. “But wait!” you say. “Where’s the intellectual property and information technology?”
And I answer, “Everywhere.” Continue reading
Richard Stallman came to Vancouver, and I upset him
Richard Stallman was in Vancouver two weeks ago. He performed, if I may describe his lectures like that, three times; I caught the first. I asked Stallman a question after it was over, and thoroughly annoyed him. I know that I annoyed him because he grew flustered, stamped his feet, turned away from me to the rest of the crowd and yelled at me. Continue reading
What would you call open-source marketing?
Instead of tightening your grip on intellectual property (mostly trade-mark with a healthy dose of copyright and some neighbouring rights) and then hoping for royalties, the group doing the marketing attempts to engineer a type of personality cult for the brand. … What I’m talking about is tying differences (real or created) to cultural phenomena, and then grabbing hold of those phenomena and driving from that end; the product becomes a tag-along to those cultural memes. Continue reading
New ways of looking at video game IP
This is where we tread the line between copyright and patent – between creative work and invention – that has plagued software intellectual property protection for a very long time. The game bears enough in common with its paper-and-dice ancestors to merit some form of patent consideration; yet the invention here is in fact a platform for storytelling – a tool to inspire and facilitate the creation of content by its users. Continue reading
Software IP and Games – which model applies?
At the moment, video games, because they are software, are covered by copyright. But traditionally, games were covered by patent. Hmm. I’ve argued before that software should be sui generis, governed by a hybrid model of patent and copyright: The … Continue reading
Alternatives to C-61, part II
Here’s the rest of that post: GOALS The goal of any legislation is to balance concerns of interested but competing parties, and to approach this balance, as much as possible, with a public interest bias. The concerns were these:
The “Deliverance” of C-61 Begins
Costin’s Analysis of C-61 begins: This bill is not a brave surge forward into the 21st century for Canada, embracing the Information Age and showing the world that we lead in promoting innovation and civil liberties, that we have the wisdom to strike balance where others are stricken with fear, and that we anticipate rather than kowtow.
This bill is instead sycophantic obsequiousness to groups that should be politically and legally notwithstood according to any definition of Canadian sovereignty or democracy. Continue reading
Selling your Everything II: More on non-competition clauses, IP assignments/waivers, and employment contracts
A couple of months ago, I wrote a post on the subject of over-reaching employment contracts. Click here for it. Anyway, I promised that I would have the next part up within days and well, it’s been kind of crazy. … Continue reading