Teresa Scassa - Blog

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Copyright Law (38)

Citizen science is the name given to a kind of crowd-sourced public participatory scientific research in which professional researchers benefit from the distributed input of members of the public. Citizen science projects may include community-based research (such as testing air or water quality over a period of time), or may involve the public in identifying objects from satellite images or videos, observing and recording data, or even transcribing hand written notes or records from previous centuries. Some well-known citizen science projects include eBird, Eyewire, FoldIt, Notes from Nature, and Galaxy Zoo. Zooniverse offers a portal to a vast array of different citizen science projects. The range and quantity of citizen science experiences that are now available to interested members of the public are a testament both to the curiosity and engagement of volunteers as well as to the technologies that now enable this massive and distributed engagement.

Scientific research of all kinds – whether conventional or involving public participation – leads inevitably to the generation of intellectual property (IP). This may be in the form of patentable inventions, confidential information or copyright protected works. Intellectual property rights are relevant to the commercialization, exploitation, publication and sharing of research. They are important to the researchers, their employers, their funders, and to the research community. To a growing extent, they are of interest to the broader public – particularly where that public has been engaged in the research through citizen science.

What IP rights may arise in citizen science, how they do so, and in what circumstances, are all issues dealt with by myself and co-author Haewon Chung in a paper released in December 2015 by the Commons Lab of the Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C. Titled Best Practices for Managing Intellectual Property Rights in Citizen Science, this paper is a guide for both citizen science researchers and participants. It covers topics such as the reasons why IP rights should be taken into account in citizen science, the types of rights that are relevant, how they might arise, and how they can be managed. We provide an explanation of licensing, giving specific examples and even parse license terms. The paper concludes with a discussion of best practices for researchers and a checklist for citizen science participants.

Our goal in preparing this report was to raise awareness of IP issues, and to help researchers think through IP issues in the design of their projects so that they can achieve their objectives without unpleasant surprises down the road. These unpleasant surprises might include realizing too late that the necessary rights to publish photographs or other materials contributed by participants have not been obtained; that commitments to project funders preclude the anticipated sharing of research results with participants; or that the name chosen for a highly successful project infringes the trademark rights of others. We also raise issues from participant perspectives: What is the difference between a transfer of IP rights in contributed photos or video and a non-exclusive license with respect to the same material? Should participants expect that research data and related publications will be made available under open licenses in exchange for their participation? When and how are participant contributions to be acknowledged in any research outputs of the project?

In addition to these issues, we consider the diverse IP interests that may be at play in citizen science projects, including those of researchers, their institutions, funders, participants, third party platform hosts, and the broader public. As citizen science grows in popularity, and as the scope, type and variety of projects also expands, so too will the IP issues. We hope that our research will contribute to a greater understanding of these issues and to the complex array of relationships in which they arise.

Note: This research paper was funded by the Commons Lab of the Wilson Center and builds upon our earlier shorter paper: Typology of Citizen Science Projects from an Intellectual Property Perspective: Invention and Authorship Between Researchers and Participants. Both papers are published under a Creative Commons Licence.

 


Wednesday, 02 December 2015 08:06

Like taking copyright from a kid . . .

Written by Teresa Scassa

A & E Canadian Classroom is running a student essay competition titled 2015 Lives that Make a Difference. The contest offers cash prizes to schools and to children who submit original essays that identify and discuss a person who has had a significant impact on Canadian society. The contest is no doubt laudable for encouraging children to write, and on a worthwhile theme. Schools from across the country are probably encouraging students from grades 5 to 12 to submit their work to this contest.

While the contest may be laudable, the way in which it deals with student intellectual property rights in their work is not. The home page for the contest features a fillable form through which a student’s 300 word essay can be submitted. At the bottom of the form is a check box with the words: I agree to allow my child (named above) to participate in the A&E Network® Canadian Lives That Make a Difference Essay Contest. I am in accordance with the terms outlined in the rules.” There is no hyperlink from either of the words “terms” or “rules” that would take a parent to the rules to which they are agreeing. This on its own is a poor practice. A parent interested in the rules has to search elsewhere on the page for the tab labelled “official rules”. On the issue of intellectual property, these rules provide:


“All essays become the property of A&E Television Networks and will not be acknowledged or returned. Entrants acknowledge and agree that they waive all rights of any kind whatsoever to their entries and that their entries become the property of A&E Television Networks, which thereby has the right to edit, adapt, modify, reproduce, publish, promote and otherwise use entries in any way they see fit without further compensation, except where prohibited by law.”

Contest winners will not receive their prizes unless they execute an “assignment of rights within 10 days of notification attempt”.

Clearly, if A & E is to publish winning entries on their website or feature them in other media they will need permission to do so. A & E may also be mining the contest to get a sense of which public figures are inspiring kids across the country. To this end, they probably also want to insulate themselves from potential lawsuits if they later produce content about some of the individuals featured in student essays. It is therefore entirely reasonable for A & E to address IP issues in the contest rules. What is less reasonable is to require students to surrender all IP rights in their essays as a condition of participation. The quid pro quo for this wholesale surrender of IP rights by potentially thousands of kids across the country is the chance to win one of only 4 student prizes.

It is possible for A & E to hold the contest, to insulate itself from legal risk, and to get kids excited about writing without pillaging their intellectual property rights. The perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license is a device that is much used and well known. It allows the licensee to make full and free use of a work while still leaving the copyright with its author. This means that the author of the work would be free to use it in other contexts and for other purposes (which might include, for example, sharing it with friends of family through social media). It is not as if any of these essays are likely to have a market value – after submission, most will quickly be forgotten by their authors. But there is an issue here of respect.

We have all experienced the inundation of copyright notices in relation to films, music, and other content. We are told that we have to respect authors and creators, that copyright infringement is analogous to theft or piracy. What we hear much less about is the exploitation of unequal bargaining power as well as unequal knowledge and resources by corporations that arrogate to themselves more rights in the intellectual property of others than is necessary. There is something fundamentally problematic about bludgeoning kids with dire warnings about respecting the IP rights of others while at the same time showing total disregard for their own rights as creators.

And lest this all be about A & E (the terms and conditions of other similar contests and publishing “opportunities” offered to students bear examination), there should also be some onus on school boards to consider the terms and conditions under which students are encouraged to apply to these sorts of contests. It would be helpful if they used their power as conduits for student participants to insist that terms and conditions are fair and respectful of the students’ rights as creators.

 


The recent story of the wholesale copying of an Inuit shaman’s robe by a UK designer raises interesting issues regarding the legal protection (or lack thereof) for indigenous cultural heritage in Canada as well as the cultural dissonance that can arise in disputes over the right to use certain motifs, designs and images.

In this case, the great-granddaughter of an Inuit shaman has expressed dismay over the use of the design of a shaman’s jacket. The design for the original jacket was one that came to her great-grandfather in a dream. The jacket had been photographed and the photograph appeared in a book titled Northern Voices: Inuit Writing in English by Penny Petrone, published in 1988. According to the CBC story, a replica of the same shaman’s jacket was used in a 2006 film titled The Journals of Knud Rasmussen.

Seen through a Western IP lens, the shaman who created the design might well be its author, and the design might be capable of copyright protection, but the term of copyright protection would have expired by now. As a result, the design is in the “public domain” and anyone is free to copy it. Yet from the great-granddaughter’s perspective, the design is sacred, and its reproduction or use should be subject to consent. Who is entitled to give this consent and under what terms may be complex questions, yet they are questions that ethics, at least, if not law, require to be asked.

The issue of the appropriation of indigenous imagery or designs in fashion and in other contexts is a recurring one. In Canada, for example, a dispute arose over the decision of HBC to outsource the creation of imitation Cowichan sweaters for sale during the Vancouver Olympics. Other fashion designers have been taken to task for their appropriation of indigenous cultural imagery and design. There have also been concerns raised about the appropriation of indigenous tattoo designs, as well as the incorporation of other indigenous designs or symbols into fashion and home décor items. There have been many instances as well of the use of indigenous pictographs on t-shirts. In March 2015, the CBC also reported on the use of First Nations design elements in the fashion line of Dsquared2, although in this case the concerns were not simply over cultural appropriation but also over the use of offensive terminology. These are only a very few examples.

Arguments about the right to restrict and control the use of sacred imagery, or the right to control the production and reproduction of indigenous designs are frequently treated as normative ones. In other words, they turn on what “should” be done, rather than what “must” be done. Laws, including intellectual property laws, provide legal tools to exercise control over works, but the reality is that these laws are focussed on identifying and defining property rights in creative output and in facilitating the economic exploitation of this output. While intellectual property laws can also be used to restrict the commercial exploitation of works, their focus on individual authors and the limited term of protection are not well-adapted to protecting material that is sacred to a people. The concept of the “public domain” – those things which are not protected or no longer protected by IP laws and are therefore free to all to use – can be particularly problematic when it comes to the disconnect between IP laws and indigenous cultural property. While many First Nations in Canada have found ways to use existing intellectual property laws to give them some ability to prevent or control the commercial exploitation of traditional images or designs (certification marks and official marks, for example, have been used in some cases), the effectiveness of these tools will vary according to the circumstances, and in some cases they may simply not be suitable.

Normative arguments are easy to dismiss and ignore, in part because the legal machinery of the state is not there to recognize and enforce them. As Canada enters a new era of reconciliation, law and policy makers should turn their attention to addressing the gaps between what it is right to protect and what the law will actually protect.

 

 


The Ontario Small Claims Court has issued a decision in a copyright dispute that is extremely unfriendly to users’ rights or the right to read in Canada. The case involves the increasingly common practice of placing digital content behind a paywall.

In this case, the defendant is the Canadian Vintners Association (CVA). It represents the interests of wine producers in Canada. The plaintiff is the company which produces Blacklock’s Reporter, a news service that provides original digital content to subscribers. The CVA was aware of Blacklock’s Reporter, but had decided that it was not interested in subscribing (at a corporate rate of $11,470 per year.)

On December 13, 2013 Blacklock’s published a story that discussed the testimony of the defendant’s president and CEO, Dan Pazsowski, before a Commons Committee. Pazsowski was sent an electronic bulletin notifying him that he had been quoted in the story. Since his company did not have a subscription to the service, he contacted a colleague at another company that did have a subscription and asked if they could forward a copy to him. They did so. He then contacted Blacklock’s to discuss the content of the story, about which he had some concerns. He was asked how he had obtained access to the story, and was later sent an invoice for the cost of two personal subscriptions (because he had shared the story with another employee of his organization). The cost of two subscriptions was $314 plus HST). The defendant’s refusal to pay the invoice ultimately led to the law suit for breach of copyright.

In reaching his decision in this case, Deputy Judge Gilbert was particularly concerned with the fact that the defendant had not complied with the terms and conditions of the plaintiff’s website. However, the website was not the source of the material that was allegedly improperly accessed by Pazowski in this case. The article was shared with Pazsowski by a colleague who had a subscription. If the terms of use of that person’s contact with Blacklock’s prohibited her from sharing any content, then she may have been in breach of her contract. This, however, does not mean that Pazsowski infringed copyright. Receiving and reading a copy of an article sent by another person is not per se copyright infringement.

Judge Gilbert also found that the defendant had unlawfully circumvented technical protection measures in order to access the material in question, in contravention of controversial new provisions of the Copyright Act. It would seem that, in the eyes of the court, to ask someone for a copy of an article legally obtained by that person could amount to a circumvention of technical protection measures. If such an approach were accepted, the scope of the anti-circumvention provision would be disturbingly broad. In fact, in this case, nothing was done to circumvent any technological protection measures. The article was legally accessed by a subscriber. The issue is with the sharing of the content by the subscriber with another, in contravention of the terms of use agreed to by the subscriber.

The defendant had asserted a fair dealing defence, arguing that he had sought access to the article out of concern that it contained inaccuracies that he wanted to take steps to correct. This was argued to be fair dealing for the purpose of research or private study, which is permitted under the Copyright Act. Notwithstanding the very broad scope given to the fair dealing exception by the Supreme Court of Canada, Judge Gilbert ruled that there was no fair dealing. He wrote: “it cannot be said that the purpose here was genuine given the fact that nothing came of the research (obtaining the full article) once obtained. Giving the Defendants the benefit of the doubt here that the intention was genuine, the follow through was not.” (at para 57). This novel proposition suggests that research must result in some concrete or tangible outcome to amount to fair dealing. As any researcher knows, there may be many false starts or cold trails. In any event, the court seems to overlook the fact that Pazowski actually contacted Blacklock’s to discuss their article with them. It was this contact that led to the lawsuit. Justice Gilbert also rejected the fair dealing claim on the basis that the article had not been legally obtained. This, of course, is a significant fair dealing issue in the context of paywalls and other barriers to access to works. Given, however, that Pazowski obtained the article from someone with legal access to the database, there was room here for a more nuanced assessment.

If the decision itself is not enough to raise your eyebrows, then the damage award surely will. Keep in mind that the plaintiffs originally sought the price of two personal annual subscriptions as compensation for the access to the article by the defendant ($314 plus HST). The court ordered damages in the amount of $11,470 plus HST – the cost of a corporate annual subscription. Judge Gilbert cited as justification for this amount the fact that the defendants “continued to stand steadfast to the notion that they had done nothing wrong while knowing that they had taken steps to bypass the paywall.” (at para 64). In addition, he awarded $2000 in punitive damages.

A business that is entirely reliant on providing content behind a paywall clearly has an interest in ensuring that access to that content is limited to subscribers to the extent possible. But does this mean that no other access to the content can be tolerated? A person who has legally purchased a book may lend it to another to read. Is there room for the law adopt an equivalent approach for content behind pay walls? It certainly does not seem appropriate that a news service can publish articles about individuals and then have the courts support them in their attempts to so securely lock down that content that the individual cannot even see what was written about them without having to pay for an annual subscription. This decision is so entirely lacking in the balance mandated by the Supreme Court of Canada that one can only hope it is nothing more than a strange outlier.

 


It is not every day that courts are asked to interpret Creative Commons licenses, which is what makes the recent U.S. decision in Drauglis v. Kappa Map Group, LLC of particular interest.

Creative Commons offers a suite of licenses that can be used by those seeking to license their copyright-protected works under terms that facilitate different levels of sharing and use. Some licenses are virtually without restriction; others restrict uses of the work to non-commercial uses; contain requirements to give attribution to the author of the work; or require that any derivative works made using the licensed work by made available under similar license terms (Share-Alike). The licenses are available in multiple languages and have been adapted to the laws of a variety of different countries. They are even used for open government licensing of works in countries like Australia and New Zealand.

In this case, the plaintiff Art Drauglis was a photographer who had posted a photograph on Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license (CC BY-SA 2.0). The defendant was a company that published maps and map-related products. It downloaded a copy of the plaintiff’s photograph from Flickr, and used it on the cover of an atlas it published titled “Montgomery co., Maryland Street Atlas”. The atlas was sold commercially, and the defendant claimed copyright in it. The copyright notice for the atlas appeared its first page, along with its table of contents. On the rear cover of the atlas, the title of the plaintiff’s photograph was provided as well as the information about the name of the photographer and the fact that it was used under a CC-BY-SA-2.0 license.

The plaintiff’s first claim – that the defendant had breached his copyright in the photograph – was quickly rejected by the Court. The District Court (District of Columbia) found that the defendant had used the image under license. Further, the license specifically permitted commercial uses of the image. Thus the plaintiff was limited to arguing that the defendant’s use of the photograph was not in compliance with the terms of the license. There were 3 main arguments regarding non-compliance. These were that: 1) the Share-Alike condition of the license was breached by the defendant’s commercial sale of the atlas; 2) the defendant did not include a proper Uniform Resource Identifier for the CC license as required by the license terms; and 3) the defendant did not provide the proper attribution for the photograph as required by the license.

The CC BY-SA 2.0 license requires that derivative works made using the licensed works also be made available under the same or comparable license terms. The plaintiff therefore argued that the defendant breached this term by publishing the atlas commercially and not under an equivalent license. The court disagreed. It found that the CC license contemplated two categories of re-use of the licensed work – in a “collective work” (defined in the license as a “periodical issue, anthology or encyclopedia, in which the Work in its entirety in unmodified form” is included with other contributions into a collective whole), or as a “derivative work” (defined in the license as a “work based upon the Work. . . in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or adapted”.) It is only derivative works that must be licensed under comparable license terms. The court found that the use of the photograph in this case was as part of a collective work. That collective work was the atlas, consisting of a series of separate works (maps) compiled together with other elements, including the plaintiff’s photograph, in a book. The court rejected arguments that the photograph had been cropped, and was thus “recast, transformed or adapted” rather than incorporated “in its entirety in unmodified form”. It was not persuaded that any cropping had taken place; if it had it was so minor in nature that it was inconsequential.

The CC BY-SA 2.0 license also requires that the licensee “must include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier for, this License with every copy . . . of the Work”. The plaintiff argued that this clause had been violated by the defendant because it only referred to the license as a CC-BY-SA 2.0 license and did not provide a URL for the license. The court distinguished between a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) and a URL, noting that ‘URI’ is a term with a broader meaning than URL. While providing a URL might meet this requirement, providing the abbreviated name and version of the license met the requirement for a URI. The court noted that anyone searching the internet for “CC BY-SA 2.0” would easily arrive at the proper license.

The plaintiff also argued that the defendant did not properly attribute authorship of the photograph to the plaintiff in accordance with the terms of the license. The license required that any credit given to the author of a work in a derivative or collective work must, at a minimum, “appear where any other comparable authorship credit appears and in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable authorship credit.” (Section 4(c)). Because the copyright information for the atlas as a whole appeared on the inside front page and the credit for the cover photo appeared on the back of the atlas, the plaintiff argued that this condition was not met. However, the court found that copyright information was provided for each map on each page of the atlas, and that this type of credit was comparable to that provided for the cover photograph. The court found that “the Photograph is more akin to each of the individual maps contained with the Atlas than to the Atlas itself; the maps are discrete, stand-alone pictorial or graphic works, whereas the Atlas is a compilation of many elements, arranged in a specific and proprietary fashion, and constituting a separate and original work.” (at p. 18) As a result, the attribution provided for the cover photo was comparable to that provided for other works in the collective work.

This would appear to be a case where the plaintiff’s expectations as to what the CC license he used for his work would achieve for him were not met. It is perhaps a cautionary tale for those who use template licenses – the simplicity and user-friendliness of the human readable version of the license does not mean that the detail in the legal code should be ignored – particularly where the licensor seeks to place specific limits on how the work might be used.


In 2007 Stephanie Lenz filed a law suit against Universal Music, alleging that it had violated the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) by sending her a takedown notice that misrepresented the extent of their rights. Lenz had made a 29 second videotape of her two small children dancing to a Prince song (Let’s Go Crazy) on the radio and had posted the video on YouTube. YouTube contacted her to indicate that it had received a takedown notice for this video. The notice alleged that it infringed upon Universal’s rights in the song. YouTube removed the video from its service. Lenz sought to have the video reinstated using the provisions of the DMCA. Notwithstanding Universal’s resistance, the video was eventually reinstated by YouTube.

Lenz’s lawsuit (which was supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation) stalled on the issue of whether the DMCA required copyright owners to take fair use into consideration before issuing takedown notices. On Monday, September 14, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued its decision on this issue, clearing the way for the matter to finally head to trial. The Court ruled that copyright owners do indeed have an obligation to take fair use into account. In order to issue a takedown notice, the copyright owner must include a statement, pursuant to 17 USC § 512(c)(3)(A)(v) to the effect that “We have a good faith belief that the above-described activity is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.” The DMCA provides, in §512(f) that a party that abuses the DMCA by, among other things, materially misrepresenting “that material or activity is infringing”, is liable for damages.

The core issue for the court to determine was what meaning to give to the statement required by the DMCA that the copyright owner has a good faith belief that the material at issue is not “authorized. . . by law.” More specifically, the issue was whether the fair use defences in the Copyright Act are merely defences, or whether they are provisions capable of “authorizing” certain uses of copyright protected materials. The Court of Appeal found that “the statute unambiguously contemplates fair use as a use authorized by law.” (at p. 11) It ruled that fair use was only characterized as a defence for procedural purposes. The provision itself declares that “the fair use of a copyright work. . . is not an infringement of copyright.” (Note that in Canada, the fair dealing provisions are framed in a similar manner: “Fair dealing . . . does not infringe copyright. . . “.(see ss. 29-29.2 of the Copyright Act). The Court of Appeals also found that even if fair use were considered an “affirmative defense”, it would still have a different character. The Court concluded that because the fair use provision of the U.S. Copyright Act “created a type of non-infringing use, fair use is “authorized by the law” and a copyright holder must consider the existence of fair use before sending a takedown notification.” (at p. 15)

The Court of Appeal also turned its attention to whether Universal knowingly represented that it believed the video did not constitute a fair use of the copyright protected work. The Court was of the view that Universal had to establish a subjective (rather than an objective) good faith belief that the use in question was not authorized. The Court clarified that a copyright owner that formed a good faith belief that a use was not a fair use would not be liable under the DMCA for sending out a takedown notice. However, “if a copyright holder ignores or neglects our unequivocal holding that it must consider fair use before sending a takedown notification”, it will be liable (at p. 17). The Court also made it clear that any copyright owner who merely ”pays lip service to the consideration of fair use by claiming it formed a good faith belief when there is evidence to the contrary” is still liable (at pp. 17-18). The consideration given to the fair use issue “need not be searching or intensive.” (at p. 18) The Court did not rule out the use of screening algorithms to detect potentially infringing content and even to meet the statutory requirement to consider fair use, although it did not consider the issue in detail as Universal did not claim to have used a screening algorithm in this case.

The Court also indicated that a “willful blindness” theory might be available to determine whether a copyright owner made a knowing misrepresentation of a good faith belief that the activity at issue was not fair use. However, on the facts before it, it ruled that the wilful blindness was not available. To show wilful blindness, a plaintiff would have to establish both the defendant’s subjective belief that “there is a high probability that a fact exists” and that the defendant took “deliberate actions to avoid learning of that fact” (at pp. 20-21) The Court found that Lenz had not met the threshold to establish the first element of that test.

On a final point, Universal had argued that Lenz’s suit must fail because she could not show that she suffered any monetary loss as a result of their actions. The Court of Appeals ruled that a plaintiff in Lenz’s circumstances could seek the recovery of nominal damages.

The decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals is significant. It is handed down in a context in which many feel that copyright holders have been abusing the notice and takedown provisions of the DMCA, effectively using them to suppress otherwise legitimate expression. The Court of Appeal had some strong words for copyright owners, warning them that they “cannot shirk their duty to consider – in good faith and prior to sending a takedown notification – whether allegedly infringing material constitutes faire use, a use which the DMCA plainly contemplates as authorized by the law.” (at p. 25)


In a paper that I have just published in the Fordham Urban Law Journal, I consider the evolution of intellectual property (IP) claims in relation to three specific categories of data that have been of interest to transit users: route maps, static transit data, and real-time GPS data. This data is generated by municipal transit authorities in the course of their operations. Increasingly, it has been sought as open data by developers keen to make use of this data in a very broad range of apps. It is also of interest to corporations that seek to add value to their products and services.

Route maps are a very basic form of transit data – they represent, in graphic form, the general location and ordering of transit stops within a given transit system. Static transit data is essentially schedule or timetable data. It is referred to as “static” because it is not subject to rapid change, although timetable data does change seasonally, as well as in response to growth or development in a given transit system. Real-time transit data is generated and communicated in real time. Typically it is gathered from GPS units that are installed on transit vehicles.

These three categories of data have all been the focus of IP disputes involving different actors and differing motivations. Because the categories of data also reflect an evolution of the types of available data, the technologies for accessing and using that data, and the growing complexity and value of the data, they offer an interesting window into the evolution of IP claims in this area. More specifically, they allow IP law to be considered not so much as the focus of inquiry (i.e. whether there is copyright in transit data), but rather in relation to its role within an emerging and evolving community of practice shaped by changing technology.

The claim to IP rights in something (a bus timetable, for example) is based upon an understanding that such rights may exist and are supported by statute and case law. However, in my research I was interested not just in law in this strict sense (i.e: can one have copyright in a bus timetable), but rather in law as it was experienced. What I found was that actual law was surprisingly irrelevant to many of the claims being asserted in the transit data context. Being in a position to make a claim to IP rights was in many ways more important than actually having a good claim.

Disputes over transit data have evolved along with the data. Early claims of copyright infringement were levelled by transit authorities against developers who adapted transit maps for viewing on the iPod. Similarly, copyright infringement claims were brought against app developers who used static transit data to develop timetable apps for emerging smartphone technology. Compounding the impact of these claims, notice and takedown provisions in U.S. copyright law gave putative rights holders a tool to remove apps from circulation based on copyright claims, regardless of their merits. Similar conflicts arose in relation to real-time GPS data. With real-time GPS data, another level was added – so-called patent trolls in Canada and the US pursued municipalities and app developers alike for the use of allegedly patented code useful in the communication of real-time GPS data.

In spite of a proliferation of IP claims, the municipal transit data context is one in which there is virtually no litigation. Instead, there are simply claims to rights invoked in cease and desist letters, as well as responses to those letters and public reaction to those claims. In the rare instances of formalized legal proceedings, disputes typically settle before going to court. As well, because disputes over municipal transit data tend to focus on claims to rights in data or data-based products, the claims are fundamentally both weak and contingent. They are weak because there can be no copyright in facts, and because the copyright in compilations of facts is notoriously “thin”. They are contingent because the only way to resolve the issue of whether any given compilation of facts is protected by copyright is to litigate the matter. In a context where the potential defendants cannot afford, or have no incentive, to litigate, it is the claim that matters far more than its merits.

Claims to intellectual property rights also underlie the contracts and licenses that are used to manage interactions in this area as well. They are used to arrive at ‘consensual’ solutions regarding the use of IP. In this sense, the licenses acknowledge and reinforce rights claims, creating, perhaps, a communal acquiescence to the claims. An open data licence involves a government granting a licence to use its data without need for permission or compensation; such a licence is premised upon the existence of IP rights. A party who agrees to such a licence before using the data tacitly accepts this IP claim.

In addition to the points of conflict discussed above, copyright law has been fundamental to the many open licences developed in conjunction with open transit data, and as such it has shaped other consensual relationships between actors in this field. As open data licences began to proliferate, issues around legal interoperability came to the fore, along with issues regarding the use of proprietary, as opposed to open, standards for transit data. These issues are not ones which attract litigation; for the most part they are matters of trial and error, negotiation and compromise. They reflect ongoing interaction and relationships between transit authorities, developers, private sector corporations and civil society groups. In my paper, I look at how community consensuses about law can emerge even in the absence of a specific legal text or case law. I examine how law is used by different actors to achieve certain ends, and what those ends are.

In the case of municipal transit data, the emerging and evolving open data movement began to have an impact on government practices with arguments around greater efficiency, lower cost, better citizen engagement, and so on. It drew upon the experience and rhetoric of the open source movement, as well as on the norms and practices of the software development community. These developments eventually led, in some key cases, to a shift in how (still very weak) IP rights were managed by municipalities and transit authorities. This in turn engaged new legal issues around open licenses. As open transit data evolved, so too did the number and nature of the actors with an interest in this area. IP rights become entangled not just in the transit data itself, but also in the technologies used to generate the data. IP became a matter of contention or consideration between a range of actors, both private and public sector.

My full paper, complete with references can be found here.


Wednesday, 18 February 2015 08:29

Intellectual Property Issues in Citizen Science

Written by Teresa Scassa

I am just back from the inaugural conference of the newly formed Citizen Science Association. If there were any doubt about the explosion of interest in citizen science, this conference, with its packed agenda and 600 registered attendees would lay it to rest.

Citizen science is a term whose definitional boundaries are constantly being expanded. It is sometimes also called public participatory scientific research, and broadly interpreted it could reach so far as to include open innovation. Like many other forms of collaborative and co-creative engagement, citizen science involves harnessing the labour or ingenuity of the crowd with a view to advancing scientific knowledge. Iconic citizen science projects range from eBird (involving the public in reporting and recording bird sightings), GalaxyZoo (engaging the public in classifying distant galaxies) and Nature’s Notebook (which asks the public to help track seasonal changes). Citizen science projects also stray into the biomedical realm and can cross commercial/non-commercial lines. PatientsLikeMe offers a forum for individuals to share information about their illnesses or medical conditions with researchers and with others with the same affliction. 23andMe provides individuals with information about their DNA (which participants contribute), and SNPedia provides individuals with resources to help them in interpreting their own DNA. But in addition to these more well-known projects, are thousands of others, on large and small scales across a range of scientific fields, and engaging different sectors of the public in a very broad range of activities and for a similarly broad spectrum of objectives.

My own interest in citizen science relates to the legal and ethical issues it raises. Not surprisingly, there are significant privacy issues that may be raised by various citizen science projects – and not just those in the biomedical sphere. There may also be interesting liability issues – what responsibility is engaged by researchers who invite volunteers to hike treacherous mountain trails to find and record data about elusive plant or animal species? Currently, my work is on intellectual property issues. Timed to coincide with the inaugural CitSci 2015 conference was the release of a paper I co-authored with Haewon Chung on intellectual property issues as between researchers and participants in citizen science. This paper was commissioned by the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars Commons Lab, and we are continuing to expand our work in this area with the support of the Wilson Center.

Our paper invites participants and researchers to think about intellectual property in the context of citizen science, in large part because IP issues are so fundamental to the ability of researchers, participants, and downstream users to ultimately access, use and/or disseminate research results. Relationships between researchers and participants are not the only ones of importance in citizen science – we will expand beyond these in our future work. But these relationships are nonetheless fundamentally important in citizen science. To the extent that intellectual property law is about both the relationship of authors to their works and about the relationship of authors and others in relation to those works, these issues should be part of the design of citizen science projects.

Our paper, which is meant primarily for an audience of citizen science participants and researchers, develops a typology of citizen science projects from an IP point of view. We group citizen science projects into 4 broad categories defined by the type of contribution expected of participants. In some cases the nature and degree of participation makes it unlikely that participants will have any IP claims in their contributions to the project; in other cases, participants are regularly invited to contribute materials in which they may hold rights. We suggest that researchers think about these issues before launching their project with a view to avoiding complications later on, when they try to publish their research, decide to make their data fully open online, or make other dissemination plans. In some cases, the level of involvement of participants in problem-solving or data manipulation may also raise issues about their contribution to an invention that the researchers eventually seek to patent.

Identifying the IP issues is a first step – addressing them is also important. There are many different ways (from assignment of right to licensing) in which the IP rights of contributors can be addressed. Some solutions may be more appropriate than others, depending upon the ultimate goals of the project. In choosing a solution, researchers and project designers should think of the big picture: what do they need to do with their research output? Are there ethical obligations to open citizen science data, or to share back with the participant community? Do they have particular commitments to funders or to their institutions? Even if research data is made open, are there reasons to place restrictions on how the data is used by downstream users? These are important issues which have both a legal and an ethical dimension. They are part of our ongoing work in this area.


CTV News has reported on a leaked document that suggests that the federal government will be proposing a very specific amendment to the Copyright Act as part of a future budget implementation bill. Specifically, the government will seek to create an exception to copyright infringement that will allow politicians and political parties to make use of media content in political advertisements without the need to seek permission or to pay licensing fees. Normally, the right to authorize the use of copyright protected content is one of the exclusive rights of copyright holders.

The move by the government is sandwiched between two particular events. The first is an announcement in May of this year by major media outlets that they would resist the use of their content in political advertisements. The second, of course, is the looming federal election expected to take place in the fall of 2015 (and for which the campaign already seems to be well under way).

The proposed amendment raises two broad sets of issues. The first relates to process and the second to the substance of the amendment. On the process side of things, the use of budget implementation legislation as a vehicle for ramming through legislative amendments (sometimes of enormous significance) without the normal opportunity for debate, study, and even revision is part of an ongoing degradation of the democratic process in Canada. Copyright reform has always been a lengthy and hotly contested exercise largely because copyright legislation reflects a complex balancing of interests. These interests are diverse, and they include the interests of authors/creators, owners of copyright, industry actors, disseminators of copyright materials, and the broad range of users of copyright protected works. Exceptions to the rights of owners of copyright are generally a key focus of these balancing exercises. The Copyright Act was the subject of substantial reform in 2012 (including the addition of a number of new exceptions), and is slated for another review in 2017. The addition of a new exception at this point in time smacks of self-interested expediency on the part of politicians.

As a matter of substance, it is difficult to comment directly without the actual text of the amendment. However, I offer up some general observations to highlight the complexity of the issues raised, the potential problems, and the ways in which any such amendment might benefit from greater consideration than a budget implementation bill might warrant.

It should be noted that the use of content without need for a licence is already provided for in a variety of contexts under the fair dealing exceptions in the Copyright Act. Under these exceptions, the use of a work must be for a permitted purpose (which can include news reporting, criticism or comment, parody or satire). Such use must also be considered ‘fair’ – in other words, it is not enough to simply allege a specific purpose, one must also use the work or the extract fairly. It is worth noting that the issue of the use of media content in political advertisements in Canada has never been litigated – thus we do not know whether such use might qualify, in appropriate circumstances, for one of the already existing fair dealing exceptions. A first question, therefore, is whether a new exception is needed.

Any specific exception to allow the use of media content in political advertisements would have to consider and define who would be entitled to make such use (Politicians? Candidates? Potential candidates? Political parties? Interest groups?) and what content is up for grabs (Content from mainstream media outlets? From bloggers? Twitter or other social media?). Certain existing fair dealing exceptions require that the source and author be identified when material is used, and presumably something similar should be required here. Further, one would hope that, as with the other fair dealing exceptions, there would also be the additional requirement that any use made of the content must be ‘fair’. It will be very interesting to see whether this is part of any amendment. The ‘fairness’ of any use of content in political advertisements will be a big issue: a use that misrepresents or takes content out of context would be difficult to justify as fair. But if taking things out of context is the name of the game in political ads, will we see an exception that does not impose a fairness limitation on the use of copyright owners’ content?

Any such exception would also fit within the context of the legislation, which provides for certain moral rights. These are available to human authors (and not to corporate owners) of copyright protected works. They can be asserted to protect the honour and reputation of the author, both in terms of the integrity of their work and the causes or institutions in association with which the work is used. While author-employees may waive their moral rights with respect to their employers, they do not, in so doing, necessarily waive them against the rest of the world. Thus, even with a new exception, it might be possible for journalists whose work is used in ways that affect the integrity of their work or that link them, through their work, to a cause or institution they do not support, might still have a moral rights claim. While it is reassuring to think that the exception is not a blank cheque, moral rights case law in Canada is skimpy, and it is difficult to predict what the role will be of moral rights in this context.

Of course, there is a strong public interest in the free and open exchange of ideas. It can certainly be argued that this amendment will enhance the ability to engage with media stories without the need to seek permission to do so, and that this is a good thing – even if many political advertisements are hardly a shining example of engaged political discourse. Nevertheless, to ram through such an exception to the Copyright Act in a budget implementation bill, without due democratic consideration, and in the face of some fairly serious public policy questions on both sides of the issue, makes a mockery of copyright reform. Canadians may remember that it was only in the 2012 amendments to the Copyright Act that an exception was finally included to make the home recording of televised content legal (!) and then only under a tedious list of conditions and limitations. The wheels of copyright reform move slowly and carefully indeed for ordinary Canadians; they clearly move much faster when political self-interest is engaged.

 


Ontario’s Divisional Court has decided to certify a class proceeding in Keatley Surveying Ltd. v. Teranet Inc., a case that raises issues about the copyright status of plans of survey that are prepared by surveyors and deposited in provincial land registries. (The decision of the court below refusing to certify the class action was discussed here.) The defendant, Teranet Inc. is the company that runs the province’s electronic land titles system. The class plaintiff argues that individual land surveyors hold copyright in their surveys, and it argues that the defendant Teranet violates those copyrights when it makes electronic copies of those surveys available to others for a fee. The defendant raises several arguments in its defence. These include an argument that copyright in the surveys belongs to the Crown because of the statutory requirement for such surveys. Alternatively, it is argued that copyright is assigned to the Crown through the act of registering the document. Another possibility is that the statutory scheme that governs the registration of a plan of survey creates a process whereby the surveyor consents to the copying of the submitted plan for public purposes. Finally, there is the argument that the electronic land registry system operated by Teranet confers a public benefit such that it would be against public policy to permit surveyors to enforce their copyrights. As noted in a recent posting, these questions regarding the copyright status of documents in public registries are both interesting and important, and arise in other contexts as well.

The Divisional Court was prepared to certify the class proceeding because certain deficiencies identified by the judge at first instance had been corrected in the plaintiff’s revised class certification request. For example, while initially the class had been defined in such a way that membership in the class depended on how the substantive issues would be decided, the revised definition of the class simply includes all land surveyors in Ontario who are authors of a plan of survey found in the electronic database, or who might hold copyright in such a plan as a result of their status as employer of a surveyor, or as an assignee of either the surveyor or his/her employer. The Court of Appeal also found that the other requirements for certification of a class were met.

The Court of Appeal’s decision paves the way for this law suit to proceed – though it remains far from certain that any of the underlying copyright issues will ever ultimately be decided by a court. Nevertheless, should this dispute make its way to court, it may well provide important guidance regarding copyright in documents of all kinds that are filed in public registries for statutory purposes.


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