Teresa Scassa - Blog

“Intellectual Property Law in the Knowledge Economy”, Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society, Society Record, December 2005.

“What Rights Pertain in a Photo of Artwork?”, Lawyers Weekly, July 21, 2006, p. 14.

“When is de-identified data personal information?”, Winston Report, Summer 2009, p. 18.

“Keyword advertising in trademark law”, Lawyers Weekly, November 26, 2010, p. 11.

"Language Policy in the United States", in Sylvie Leger, ed., Towards a Language Agenda:  Futurist Outlook on the United Nations, Canadian Centre for Linguistic Rights, 1996. (Reprinted in a digested version in Le Bulletin, newsletter of the Canadian Centre for Linguistic Rights, 1997).

"La langue et la justice: La transformation du droit", (1997) 1 Revue de la Common Law en Français" 247.

“Intellectual Property in the Digital Age”, Book chapter, in Karen Adams & William F. Birdsall, eds., Access to Information in a Digital World, Canadian Library Association, 2004 (pp. 31-62).

“Table Scraps or a Full Course Meal? The Public Domain in Canadian Copyright Law”, in Intellectual Property at the Edge: New Approaches to IP in a Transsystemic World, Proceedings of the Meredith Lectures, Editions Yvon Blais, 2007, pp. 347-376.

While the concept of the public domain has long been an important part of U.S. copyright case law and commentary, its role has been relatively minor in Canada. References to the public domain in Canadian cases have, until very recently, been rare, made largely in passing, and have done little to define or explore the concept. The Canadian public domain is, in some significant respects, much smaller than that in the United States, and Canadian copyright legislation and case law has not traditionally favoured a robust public domain engineered through deliberate policy choices. Rather, the public domain has been constituted by leftovers: things that cannot be monopolized by virtue of fundamental axioms of copyright law, works in which copyrights have expired, and things that do not fit within the definitions of works.   The public domain as it is currently constituted is also a fragile thing: vigilance is required in interpretations of key copyright concepts so as not to further shrink its scope. The historical role of the public domain stands in interesting contrast to its sudden assumed importance in recent Supreme Court of Canada decisions.

In this paper, I explore the scope of the public domain in Canada using illustrations drawn from “real life”. The illustrations chosen, which relate to Crown copyright and to the reproduction of works in which copyright has expired, offer insights into the scope and fragility of the public domain in Canada. Crown copyright is an example of the narrow horizons of the Canadian public domain as set out in the legislation. The issue of the reproduction of works in which copyright has expired allows for an exploration of the scope of the public domain as a matter of statutory interpretation – more specifically, the interpretation of the threshold standard of originality. This is an area of enormous significance as it is through interpretation that courts wield enormous power in constituting the public domain.

"Sentencing Intimate Femicide:  A Comment on R. v. Doyle", (1993) 41 Dalhousie L.J. 270

"The Best Things in Law are Free:  Towards Quality Free Public Access to Primary Legal Materials in Canada", (2000) 23 Dalhousie Law Journal 301-336

This paper examines the move, in the 1990s in Canada, towards making primary legal materials freely available to the public over the internet.   The paper begins by assessing the situation in Canada at the time of writing, and the need for a centralized and harmonized electronic portal for primary legal materials.  I consider initiatives in other jurisdictions aimed at providing comprehensive free public access, and explore the rationales for developing and providing such access.  I explore some of the implications and questions raised by the provision of publicly accessible primary legal materials.  These include the concepts of  “public” and “access”, concerns about information monopolies, the role of lawyers as "infomediaries" and the normative implications of "freeing" the law.