New Media

A recent decision of the Federal Court is an important new precedent for determining when the use of others’ intellectual property to criticize their products and services, including through “gripe sites”, becomes…

In a world where businesses are aggressively competing for the attention of consumers, paid online reviews and endorsements are now popular and even commonplace forms of advertisement and promotion. However, this form…

As the e-commerce space becomes ever more crowded, disputes over confusingly similar domain names are becoming ever more common. One issue that has been particularly vexing is whether a court can order…

Online threats to commercial reputations are on the rise. These include “attack sites”, “gripe sites” (e.g. RipOff Report), cyber-libel via social media, domain name high-jacking, meta tag high-jacking and defamatory email campaigns….

Back in April, we wrote about the history in Canada of a U.S. trademark infringement doctrine called “initial interest confusion” – see “A brief history of passing off, websites and “initial interest…

You’ve spent years building goodwill in your business and translating it into your brand name. You’ve registered your brand name as a trademark which you use as the domain name for your…

Take a photo, add a header and footer and voilà, you have yourself a meme. It is often really that simple. If your meme happens to be culturally relevant and creative or…

I recently argued a summary judgment motion on an interesting and somewhat novel issue relating to domain names: can someone other than the registrant of a domain name be its lawful owner…

The Ontario Superior Court’s recent decision in Rains v. Molea about allegations of copyright infringement in a series of paintings of crumpled paper, is a fun read for an IP lawyer. And while the context…

Registering and using a domain name that is similar to a competitor’s for the sole purpose of redirecting traffic to one’s website is a dirty practice. But like many other internet offenses,…