Submitted by Vincent Kam Sun Yip
Summary of Activities
Number of Meetings Held: 4
October 6, 2011
Social Event - Section Executive and Section Members met at Mahoney's for drinks in the evening.
November 17, 2011
Guest Speakers: Ryan Berger (Bull Housser); Paul Armitage (McCarthy Tetrault LLP); Alastair Stewart (CRTC)
Joint meeting with the Freedom of Information and Privacy Law Section. Speakers discussed Canada's new anti-SPAM legislation and whether it would create a stronger and safer Internet as advertised. Ryan gave an overview of the legislation, Paul discussed the anti-spyware and Competition Act related provisions, and Alastair gave a presentation on enforcement tools under the legislation.
February 23, 2012
Guest Speaker: Bradley Freedman (Borden Ladner Gervais LLP)
Bradley gave a presentation on current topics in technology law, including topics such as cloud computing, anti-spam, privacy, enforceability of online terms, domain names, hyperlinks, copyright assignment, and electronic evidence.
June 15, 2012
Guest Speakers: Roch Ripley (Gowling Lafleur Henderson); Chris Metcalfe (SAP); Jon Festinger (Festinger Law and Strategy LLP)
The speakers jointly gave a presentation on video game law. Roch discussed what constitute "video game law", namely all areas of laws that intersect with video games, and discussed some U.S. cases involving very successful video games. Chris gave a presentation on IP compliance and risk minimization relating to video game development and commercialization. Jon discussed some trends in the area, including developments that pose challenges to IP law.
Comments and Observations of the Chair
The IP and Technology Law Section is doing quite well. We have had great attendance at all of our section events and we have been able to provide our section members with informative and interesting sessions. Of note is that we held our first joint section meeting with the freedom of information and privacy section, and we look forward to hosting more joint section meetings with other sections. In addition, we were one of the first Sections to make use of CBA's video conferencing solution to allow a representative of the CRTC to present through video conference to our section members. This not only minimized any travel costs but allowed our section members to hear from someone that we would not be able to bring to Vancouver.
Our section meeting on video game law in June attracted many students and young lawyers, and we look to build on that interest over the next several years.