Four Copyright Registrations Expunged Where Respondent Was Not The Author And Owner Of The Works (Intellectual Property Weekly Abstracts Bulletin — Week of May 22, 2017)

COPYRIGHT DECISIONS

Four copyright registrations expunged where Respondent was not the author and owner of the works

Gemstone Travel Management Systems Inc. v. Andrews, 2017 FC 463

The Court granted Gemstone's application to expunge four copyright registrations and to amend one copyright registration to replace "Gemstone Travel Management Systems" with "Gemstone Travel Management Systems Inc". As a preliminary matter, the Court declined to consider the Respondent Andrews' irregular and late-filed submissions. Andrews had filed neither a record nor a memorandum of fact and law, but did make a number of written submissions in a letter submitted to the Court on the scheduled hearing date.

In an earlier application, the Court had dismissed Andrews' application for declarations and remedies relating to alleged copyright infringement and infringement of moral rights, but had concluded that, in the absence of a cross-application, the Court was without jurisdiction to expunge the copyright registrations sought by the Respondents in that application (see 2016 FC 624, our summary here). The present application was brought by Gemstone to remedy this jurisdictional defect.

The Court had previously concluded that Andrews was not an author of the software in the registrations at issue, or a joint author, and therefore, his application must fail since it is based on him being an author. The other registered owner and author of the registrations at issue did not object to their expungement from the Register in this application.

OTHER DECISIONS OF INTEREST

Order of Mandamus requiring Health Canada to issue a Product Licence Application is overturned on appeal

Canada (Health) v. The Winning Combination Inc., 2017 FCA 101

The Federal Court of Appeal has overturned an earlier decision of the Federal Court (see 2016 FC 381, our summary here) relating to the non-issuance of a Product Licence Application (PLA) for the Winning Combination's natural health product RESOLVE, a smoking cessation aid.

The Federal Court had earlier found that several decisions by the Natural and Non-Prescription Health Products Directorate and its predecessor in Health Canada were made in breach of procedural fairness. Mandamus was ordered, requiring Health Canada to issue a PLA within 30 days.

On appeal, the Attorney General conceded that the licensing decision and reconsideration process under the Regulations had not been reached in accordance with procedural fairness. However, the...