Submitted by inclawyers on Fri, 19/02/2010 - 11:32am
The story so far: A small law firm needed to change its phone system. A hardware PBX system was out of the question as too cumbersome and too costly; the home-office solutions were too small and insufficiently featured; and a virtual PBX solution had the drawback of creating an ongoing expense.
Submitted by inclawyers on Mon, 15/02/2010 - 10:58am
In the summer of 2009, we had to replace our phone system, such as it was.
I find phone systems to be mysterious. For all the simplicity that we've grown up with in terms of picking up the handset and dialing, if you actually have to go out looking for a phone system, it's a murky part of technology.
Submitted by inclawyers on Thu, 11/02/2010 - 10:00am
In the early days of the World Wide Web, before the rise of Google, one tactic that people used to get traffic to their website was to insert a widely used search term (such as Playboy) in their webpages, usually in the meta tags or as hidden text. People searching on Playboy would instead find themselves clicking through to the website, where they’d be offered a chance to buy widgets instead of whatever they had been looking for. Playboy rightly complained about that use of its trademark.
Submitted by inclawyers on Tue, 09/02/2010 - 10:00am
“Use” for Services is Easier Than for Goods
Yesterday we covered the Canadian trademark rules for “use” in relation to goods. (Read that post first if you haven’t.) The rules to establish “use” of your mark if you sell services are a little different and, in fact, are helpfully broader than if your mark only relates to selling goods.
Submitted by inclawyers on Mon, 08/02/2010 - 10:00am
Introducing Trademark-land
Over the years, I’ve learned that, in approaching many areas of law, a good mental habit to adopt is to treat the area of law as being different from all other areas of endeavour. That is, in most cases, if you approach a particular area of law with what would otherwise be typical or ordinary beliefs, associations and connotations that you use (probably successfully) in operating the rest of your life, you’ll probably come to grief.
Submitted by inclawyers on Sat, 06/02/2010 - 10:00am
In common with other countries, Canada’s Trade-mark Act allows trademark owners who have obtained registration of their trademark in their home country and used the mark somewhere in the world to apply for registration of that mark (the “foreign mark”) in Canada based solely upon that foreign registration and use. With this filing basis, it would not be necessary to rely on the “proposed use” or “actual use” filing bases in the Canadian trademark system.
For registering a foreign trade-mark in Canada, here’s a quick intro on the details:
Submitted by inclawyers on Fri, 05/02/2010 - 10:00am
Canada will be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern trademark world. In December 2009, CIPO issued a request for comments that would see amendments made to the Trade-marks Act to better align the Canadian system with the trademark systems used by major and minor countries.
Comments will be received until March 15, 2010, by fax or e-mail to the person specified in the request.
Submitted by inclawyers on Thu, 04/02/2010 - 10:00am
CIPO has issued a request for comments about a proposed practice notice dealing with professional designations and their initials. In Canada, professional designations include, for example, designations for the accounting profession: CGA, CA, and CMA; the medical profession, and professional engineers.
The thrust of the proposed practice note is that if, as a matter of first impression: