Intellectual Property
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February 20, 2025
PATENTS - Claims – Construction - Defences to infringement - Obviousness
Appeal by appellant from Federal Court decision that found a number of claims of three of its patents invalid for obviousness. The appellant argued that the Federal Court erred in its analysis of obviousness.
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February 18, 2025
Duty to give AI reasons: Explainability at work
Procedural fairness is the cornerstone of any legitimate legal system. It ensures that legal proceedings are conducted with transparency, equity and respect for the rule of law. In an era where artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly integrated into judicial and administrative decision-making, two principles are emerging as non-negotiable requirements of procedural fairness: explainability, and the “human-in-the-loop” (HITL) principle.
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February 13, 2025
CBA urges new funding as Federal Court’s massive budget shortfall threatens drastic service cuts
The Liberal government’s underfunding of the Federal Court could “drastically” reduce service to litigants, its chief justice warns, spurring the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) to call for urgent “off-cycle” federal funding to address the national trial court’s chronic multi-million-dollar budgetary shortfalls.
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February 12, 2025
Medical device industry seeks tariffs exemption due to potential impact on healthcare, patients
Medtech Canada, the national association representing the medical device industry in Canada, is calling on all jurisdictions in Canada to ensure that medical devices are excluded from any retaliatory tariffs or sanctions in response to potential U.S. tariffs.
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February 12, 2025
Feds release report on stakeholder concerns regarding copyright and generative AI policies
A federal government report on how copyright should be protected from potential threats posed by generative AI (artificial intelligence) reveals sharply divided views among industry stakeholders.
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February 12, 2025
Alberta Appeal Court rules six-year federal limitation period applies to patent infringement claims
On Jan. 28, 2025, the Alberta Court of Appeal released a decision in the case of JL Energy Transportation Inc. v. Alliance Pipeline Limited Partnership, [2025] A.J. No. 84, confirming that the previously enforced two-year limitation period for patent infringement claims no longer applies. In its ruling, the rejected the two-year window in favour of a six-year limitation, overturning the summary dismissal of the plaintiff’s lawsuit and allowing the case to proceed to trial.
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February 11, 2025
Canada signs on to legally binding European convention governing AI development
Canada has joined the European Union and 11 other countries in signing the first legally binding international agreement aimed at ensuring that artificial intelligence (AI) systems respect human rights, democratic values and the rule of law throughout their life cycle.
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February 11, 2025
Landmark U.S. copyright decision and its implications for AI and canadian copyright law
The legal profession has entered a new frontier in the intersection of artificial intelligence and copyright law. On Feb. 11, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware issued a landmark decision in Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH v Ross Intelligence Inc, No 1:20-cv-613-SB, ruling in favour of Thomson Reuters in the first major fair use copyright case involving AI. The decision, which found that ROSS Intelligence unlawfully used Thomson Reuters’ Westlaw headnotes to train its legal AI research tool, raises profound questions about the future of AI training, data access, and copyright law.
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February 10, 2025
C.J. Wagner says top court ‘exploring’ provision of mediation in cases where leave to appeal denied
Lawyers say they want to know specifics about the out-of-the-blue disclosure from Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Richard Wagner that he has asked his staff to “explore the possibility” of the top court providing “mediation” for litigants in cases where the apex court denies leave to appeal, and his suggestion that family law cases might lend themselves to a potential mediation initiative.
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February 10, 2025
Increasing regulations depressed economic and job growth, says StatCan study
In a new study on the potential impact of regulations on the economy, Statistics Canada has found that an increase in regulatory provisions from 2006 to 2021 was associated with a 1.7 percentage point reduction in gross domestic product growth and a 1.3 percentage point reduction in employment growth.