“It’s not just Business, it’s Personal.”
Where Employment issues meet Intellectual Property Rights.
This weblog looks at the issues arising from the intersection of employment rights and intellectual property rights: ownership, protection, rights to use, confidential information and non-disclosure obligations, restrictive covenants, non-solicitation and non-competition obligations, licensing, enforcement, injunctions and damages — anything that happens where creativity and relationships meet.
As a type of property, Intellectual Property refers to the intangible. In contrast to real property and personal property, it refers to what individuals have created, usually expressed or translated into a tangible form that is assigned certain rights of property. Employment law covers the body of laws, administrative rulings, and precedents which address the legal rights of, and restrictions on, persons and their organizations.
For organizations dependent upon the use of intellectual capital, the navigation of the space at the intersection of employment and intellectual property law is essential in order to ensure protect competitive advantages and effective commercialization of the technology and technologically derived products and services.
In Canada, these laws exist at both the provincial and federal levels. At the federal level, the Constitution and legislation authorized under the Constitution deal exclusively with patents and copyrights, and concurrently with trade-marks and related areas of unfair competition. International intellectual property law, with the exception of trade secrets, is governed by federal and international treaty legislation.
In the era of globalization, with the worldwide internet and the subsequent ability for proprietary data to be copied and appropriated, there is a greater need for harmony and coordination amongst national jurisdictions in relation to the development and protection of intellectual property rights. Hopefully, this weblog will contribute to this debate.
EmployIPLaw 