Intellectual Property
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January 23, 2026
OBA civil litigation award recipients encourage mentorship in the profession
The importance of mentorship and elevating young lawyers was a focal point of the Ontario Bar Association’s (OBA) Civil Dinner, which celebrates excellence in the bar. Both recipients of the OBA awards emphasized the vital position role models play in the profession.
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January 23, 2026
Moral, legal imperatives affecting restitution of looted art
As someone involved in the field of art restitution, I often marvel at the different types of responses that we receive once we advise someone that the artwork in their possession was looted during the Holocaust and must now be returned to its rightful owners. Possessors who find themselves in this predicament range from private individuals to corporations and foundations, but most institutional possessors are clearly museums, which range from small regional ones in Western and Eastern Europe to the most prominent ones in Europe and the United States.
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January 22, 2026
Cassels adds 11 new partners
Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP has announced that 11 lawyers have been admitted into its partnership for 2026.
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January 22, 2026
John McKeown joins Loopstra Nixon as partner
John McKeown has joined Loopstra Nixon LLP as a partner with the intellectual property practice group.
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January 20, 2026
Alberta regulator warns investors of AI-driven scams, private chat frauds in 2026
The Alberta Securities Commission (ASC) is warning the province’s investors about the top three scams and misleading tactics to be wary of in 2026, and how they can protect themselves.
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January 20, 2026
The new copyright, AI and pictures: Article 70 and the Italian path to the EU AI Act
The rapid ascent of generative AI has turned the act of “looking” into a legal battlefield. For an AI model to generate a picture, it must first “digest” millions of existing ones. In response to this technical reality, the Italian parliament’s fall 2025 reform introduced Article 70-septies into the Italian Copyright Law (ICL). This provision represents the “Italian path” toward harmonizing national intellectual property law with the landmark European Union AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689).
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January 19, 2026
Federal Court clarifies leave requirement for new evidence in trademark appeals
The appellant appeals from a decision of the Trademarks Opposition Board, refusing its application for registration of the trademark FILTER DESIGN. The FILTER DESIGN trademark consists of the “positioning of a sign” in the form of a pattern of diamond-shaped apertures on the surface of certain air filters. The board refused the application on grounds that the diamond-shaped apertures were dictated primarily by a utilitarian function, and the trademark was unregistrable pursuant to subsection 12(2) of the Trademarks Act (Products Unlimited, Inc. v. Five Seasons Comfort Limited, 2026 FC 48).
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January 16, 2026
SCC’s packed winter session features momentous appeal on Charter s. 33 override provision
The Supreme Court of Canada began hearings in its very busy winter session this week, which features a potentially watershed constitutional appeal and the surprise announcement that Justice Sheilah Martin, the court’s senior western judge, will retire next spring.
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January 16, 2026
Privacy commissioner investigates social media company due to reports of sexualized deepfake images
Canada’s privacy commissioner is expanding a current investigation into X Corp., the company that operates social media platform X, after reports that the platform’s chatbot is “being used to create explicit images of individuals without their consent.”
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January 15, 2026
The new definition of artwork: Being human, being protected
In September 2025, the Italian parliament enacted a landmark reform that definitively reshaped the boundaries of intellectual property in the age of algorithms. Through Law No. 132 of Sept. 23, 2025, the Italian legislature amended Article 1 of the Italian Copyright Act (ICL), marking a decisive “anthropocentric” turn. This reformation does not merely update the law; it establishes a fundamental ontological boundary: for an artwork to be protected, it must be human.