Law360 Canada ( May 20, 2026, 9:34 AM EDT) -- Appeal by Nexus Solutions Inc. (“Nexus”) from trial judge’s decision regarding ownership claim for creation of software. At issue in this appeal was the scope of s. 13(3) of the Copyright Act (the Act), which provided that an employer was the first owner of the copyright in a work created by an employee “in the course of” their employment. In phase one of a bifurcated trial, the trial judge found that software created by Krougly was not developed in the course of his employment with Nexus, even though he secretly developed it while he was employed by Nexus and the software competed with Nexus’s software. He therefore dismissed Nexus’s s. 13(3) copyright claim. On appeal, Nexus argued that the trial judge erred in three respects. First, the trial judge erred by requiring Nexus to show that it had specifically directed Krougly to develop the software at issue before it could succeed in claiming copyright pursuant to s. 13(3) of the Act. Second, too much weight was given to an irrelevant factor, namely, whether Nexus had bargained for or otherwise expended resources to gain the rights in Krougly’s works. And third, to the extent that Nexus’s direction to Krougly may have been relevant to its copyright claim, the trial judge erred by finding that Krougly was not sufficiently directed to create the software at issue....