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"The past few decades have been witness to a number of important developments with respect to the global intellectual property (IP) system, which defined broadly encompasses the network of international and regional treaties, constitutional documents, national laws, court decisions, and local practices that make up the substantive and procedural body of IP law worldwide. These developments include the movement away from multilateralism towards bilateralism/regionalism; growing recognition of the various ways in which IP intersects with and impacts areas including human rights, development, trade, and social justice; broad acknowledgement of the economic worth of many IP rights; and important theoretical interventions that have challenged the principles and values underlying the global IP system, including through critical IP theory and the theory of new constitutionalism. These developments have occurred alongside a number of other events, changes, and crises that have changed the landscape of our global communities. Chief among them are climate change; armed conflicts; the COVID-19 pandemic; economic changes to work; and technological shifts including those relating to the internet and artificial intelligence, and their role in society. These economic, environmental, and technological changes have occurred alongside a growing recognition of the inequities that exist within and between societies as well as the ways in which these inequities are reinforced and maintained through systemic discrimination and ongoing colonialism. Given these developments, events, changes, and crises, what is the future of the global IP system? To what extent will the enactment of new treaties (or the reform or implementation of existing treaties) shape IP law over the coming years? What role, if any, will constitutional documents (including bills of rights) play in the context of the global IP system? Will today’s transformations lead to substantive reform of areas of IP law including copyright, trademark, and patents, and if so, which reforms will be given priority? What principles and values will animate the global IP system moving forward? This book is grounded in the belief that there are many possible futures for the global IP system. Countless pathways lay ahead of us, that can be followed or pursued, leading to a multiplicity of outcomes. These futures can materialize in many different ways. Social movements can reach into and through IP to effect change and to embed new values and perspectives. An idea can emerge (sometimes in multiple places at the same time) and, through the hard work of individuals and collectives, both change the way in which individuals perceive a body of law and reshape the law itself. Technological change can create a set of futures that otherwise might not have been available or even imagined."-- Provided by publisher

In response to the Canadian government consultation process on the modernization of the copyright framework launched in the summer 2021, we hereby present our analysis and recommendations concerning the interaction between copyright and the Internet of Things (IoT). The recommendations herein reflect the shared opinion of the intellectual property scholars who are signatories to this brief. They are informed by many combined decades of study, teaching, and practice in Canadian, US, and international intellectual property law.In what follows, we explain:•The importance of approaching the questions raised in the consultation with a firm commitment to maintaining the appropriate balance of rights and interests in Canada’s copyright system, within the broader framework of the Constitution;•That the modernization of the Copyright Act requires a careful examination of the copyright framework within larger observable trends of dominant positions in the marketplace and anti-competitive practices, of the extraction of big (personal) data, and of market and legal infrastructures’ heavy reliance on non-negotiated standard form contracts;-That the growing prevalence of the IoT shows more clearly than ever before why Technological Protection Measures (TPMs) need to be recalibrated in keeping with the objectives of copyright, the Constitution, property rights, and of promoting competitive markets.As such, we recommend: -To narrow the scope of the TPM prohibitions under the Copyright Act, whereby the circumvention of access controls or copy controls for non-copyright-infringing purposes would be lawful, with a non-exhaustive list of such purposes to provide greater legal certainty. The same treatment would apply to the dealing in TPM circumvention technology enabling the exercise of non-copyright-infringing purposes.In the alternative, the Copyright Act should be amended to:-Introduce a new exception that would confirm that the TPM provisions (and other relevant exclusive rights in the Copyright Act) do not apply to the right to repair, including for maintenance and diagnostics purposes. -Introduce a new exception to encourage follow-on innovation. -Additionally, just as copyright holders should not be allowed to contract out of exceptions to copyright infringement through non-negotiated standard form agreements, neither should they be allowed to opt out of exceptions to TPM prohibitions by contract.

In response to the Canadian government consultation process on the modernization of the copyright framework launched in the summer 2021, we hereby present our analysis and recommendations concerning the interaction between copyright and artificial intelligence (AI). The recommendations herein reflect the shared opinion of the intellectual property scholars who are signatories to this brief. They are informed by many combined decades of study, teaching, and practice in Canadian and international intellectual property law. In what follows, we explain:- The importance of approaching the questions raised in the consultation with a firm commitment to maintaining the appropriate balance of rights and interests in Canada’s copyright system, consistent with a robust principle of technological neutrality.- The importance of ensuring that text and data mining (TDM) activity can be undertaken in Canada without the threat of potential copyright liability. We therefore propose both an opening up of Canada’s fair dealing doctrine to better accommodate TDM activities, and the enactment of a specific statutory provision to confirm that uses of copyright works and other subject matter for TDM (whether commercial or non-commercial) do not infringe copyright. - The importance of resisting calls to extend copyright protection to AI-generated outputs. We therefore propose maintaining and confirming the existing principled requirements of human authorship and original expression as preconditions of copyright protection, and we caution against any move to establish new neighbouring or sui generis rights in respect of AI outputs. Works generated by AI should remain in the public domain. As such, we recommend:- Enacting a broad statutory provision confirming that use of a work or other subject matter for TDM does not infringe copyright. This specific exception should be available to all users, apply to commercial and noncommercial uses, permit the retention and sharing of copies, and be protected from contractual override. - Amending section 29 of the Copyright Act to make the list of purposes an illustrative list (“for purposes such as”) and adding TDM or data/informational analysis as an enumerated purpose therein.- Confirming in section 2 of the Copyright Act that “author” means a human being/natural person; and confirming in section 5 of the Copyright Act that copyright shall not subsist in a work created without a human author.