On April 5, 2021, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) issued its decision in Google LLC v Oracle America Inc, 593 US ___ (2021), holding that Google’s copying, and incorporation into its Android mobile platform, of approximately 11,500 lines of code from the Oracle-owned application programming interface Java SE (the API) was not copyright infringement and constituted fair use. The decision, delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, marks the end of a decade-long litigation between the tech giants, in which Oracle initially claimed damages in the amount of nearly 9 billion USD for Google’s alleged copyright infringement (previously reported by the E-TIPS® Newsletter here).

On April 3, 2021, Business Insider reported that information relating to over 530 million Facebook accounts had been made publicly available online. It is estimated that 3.49 million accounts belong to Canadians and the leaked data included names, locations, birthdates, email addresses, and other identifying information.

On March 24, 2021, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) published its submission in response to the Department of Justice’s public consultation on modernizing the Privacy Act, Canada’s public sector privacy law, which has not been substantially amended in nearly 40 years.

On March 15, 2021, the Ontario Court of Appeal (the Court), in Family and Children’s Services of Lanark, Leeds and Grenville v Cooperators General Insurance Company, 2021 ONCA 159, reversed the lower court’s decision that found that Co-operators General Insurance Company (Co-operators) had a duty to defend Family and Children’s Services of Lanark, Leeds and Grenville (FCS) and Laridae Communications Inc. (Laridae) against two claims in relation to a cyber hack.

On March 29, 2021, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) launched a consultation on proposed changes to the refusal and review process for industrial design decisions. CIPO’s Discussion Paper states that the proposed changes will “make it easier to ensure consistency of final refusals” and would increase the timeliness of final decisions.

On March 13, 2021, the Government of Canada published the College of Patent Agents and Trademark Agents Regulations, Rules Amending the Patent Rules, and Regulations amending the Trademarks Regulations (collectively, the proposed Regulations) for public consultation. The proposed Regulations will implement the College of Patent Agents and Trademark Agents Act (the Act), which received royal assent in 2018, and transfer authority for agent regulation from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) to the College of Patent Agents and Trademark Agents (the College).