Industry committee  That's all true, but again, we ought to have some context here. Canadian litigation costs pale in comparison to what our counterparts south of the border, in the United States, would pay for all sorts of litigation, whether counterfeit, patent, or copyright litigation. In fact, i

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. The issue of minimum penalties for counterfeiting perhaps makes sense in theory, but the problem is that the Copyright Act doesn't distinguish between counterfeiting and pure copyright infringement. The prospect of elevating the minimum penalties could appl

Industry committee  I would say that I agree with you. I don't think the NRC is focused very heavily on counterfeiting. I would say Canadian academia has been very focused on copyright. So you can find a large number of academics doing independent research on the optimal system of copyright for Cana

Industry committee  But the goal of intellectual property law is not the enforcement of intellectual property law. The goal of intellectual property law is that it serves the broader public interest in saying that copyright at our Supreme Court has articulated a view that it's about both user rights

Industry committee  Yes, very quickly on the issue of statutory damages, because it shows how there can be negative consequences from something when you're trying to do a good thing. When we read, for example, in the United States of grandmothers or teenagers being sued for file sharing with liabili

Industry committee  I'm a Canadian lawyer, not a U.S. lawyer. I'm not able to answer your question.

Industry committee  You raise a lot there. I'd note, with respect to your question about the special 301 list, that it is a good point. The reality is that the U.S. itself is not fully compliant with its international copyright obligations, and so were there to be a list, you could easily put the U

Industry committee  What I suggested is that where someone is deceiving the public by affixing as CSA logo, they are trying to tell the public that it is of a certain quality when it is not. Again, that is not a trademark issue, and once you move into the realm of stronger protection for trademark a

Industry committee  I don't agree. In the example I provided in my opening remarks, focusing specifically on camcording, I believe there is the prospect of obtaining very specific data. We haven't seen it to date. We've seen numbers, as I say, that are all over the place. On that kind of issue, I th

Industry committee  Canada did. The most obvious forum internationally is the World Trade Organization. And Canada has joined as a third party, as I'm sure you're aware. The U.S. complained against China. The U.S. itself identifies China and Russia as its top priorities and almost a dozen other coun

Industry committee  But it also highlights why we have to prioritize. So the extent to which this is such a broad issue that it has infiltrated so many things means that we have to pick and choose. I mean, we have to ensure, first and foremost, that the real problems, the health and safety issues, t

Industry committee  We just heard that the RCMP itself has found that upwards of 90% of counterfeiting comes from outside the country. The U.S., which even just this week released its “Special 301” report, where it identifies various countries, chose not to elevate Canada, and has identified at le

Industry committee  I think we have every indication that people are generating some income out of this, but we also have to take a look at our statutes and note there are strong penalties. I think $20,000 per infringement, which can be used to force a settlement, is strong. On the criminal side, wi

Industry committee  Given that our copyright laws provide for statutory damages of $20,000 per infringement, that $100 isn't going to get us very far. I'd be spending more of the money on the back end in terms of trying to educate law enforcement, particularly on the health and safety side of things

Industry committee  Well, according to the RCMP data, obviously, organized crime is involved in counterfeiting, but they are not the exclusive purveyor of counterfeiting. Actually, Project Sham, which is their most recent study on this issue, says that depending on which part of the country you're i