Category Archives: Jurisprudence

A Good Little Example of the Importance of Respecting the Moral Rights of Creators, in Canada, Yes Even After Securing a License as to a Work

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A Québec lower court recently provided us with a good (albeit modest) example of the problem that moral rights can be for Canadian businesses, when handling third-party creations such a photographs, without first obtaining an adequate waiver from creators. The case at issue was: Lavigne (Valmedia) v. 9061-6632 Québec inc. (2021 QCCQ 13322).

This case stemmed from a relationship between a Québec publication called “Journal Accès” and a free-lance photographer who provided certain of his pictures for reuse in the publication at issue. This case was not concerned with whether the publication could publish the 3 photographs at issue, as the creator had consented to the publishing. The issue rather involved how the photographs were presented, upon actual publication, namely after making certain changes to the photos at issues and, worse yet, without acknowledging who the author was.

For the author, the problems in this case included the removal of his logo from the photos, Access’ failure to credit him for taking the 3 pictures at issue, in addition to the publication making unauthorized changes to the photographs, included adjusting colors and cropping them.

Moral rights are a idiosyncrasy of Canadian copyright law, though technically distinct from “copyrights” per se. In effect, “moral rights” generally allow authors to insist that third parties which handle their creations not modify them to any degree one might consider would affect their integrity in a manner that may be prejudicial to the author. Moral rights also allow creators to insist on being acknowledged as the author, whenever a work is used, unless the parties agreed otherwise.

In the case at issue, the photograph had agreed to the publication of his photos but had NOT agreed to the modification of these photos, nor that they could be published without acknowledging he was the author. This justified the photographer taking Accès to court (in small claims court, but still), to obtain redress further to the alleged violation of his moral rights.

At the end of the day, the judgement does confirm that there really was an issue with moral rights in this case, albeit only as to the issue of identifying the photographer as the creator of the photos at issue, and nothing else. Indeed, thought Accès did modify the photographs to a certain extent, including correcting colors and cropping the images, the judge essentially came to the conclusion that such changes were minor enough to be unlikely to have a real effect on the photographer’s reputation, notwithstanding whatever else he may be claiming.

That said, for the judge, the omission of the photographer’s logo, as originally included on the 3 photographs at issue, coupled with the omission of his name next to the photographs pretty clearly constituted a violation of this moral rights. That being the case, one could apply the rules relating to statutory damages, to come up with a “damages” figure, with or without actual evidence of prejudice from the plaintiff.

In practice, this lead the court to award very modest damages ($400.00). The decision is nevertheless worth mentioning, if only as a example of the continued importance of keeping moral rights in mind, whenever dealing with the use of Canadian works. Even when an organization has first obtained a license (or even an assignment), the issue of moral rights may rear its ugly head later on, unless a full waiver was obtained. Failing that, the full recourses contained in the Copyright Act may be brought to bear for things like modifications or even the simple failure to acknowledge who the original author was.

Federal Court Refuses to Consider Results of On-line Survey as to Trademark Confusion Analysis

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The Federal Court recently handed a decision on an appeal of a trademark opposition, in the context of which a party unsuccessfully sought to introduce into evidence the results of
an on-line survey, in Tokai of Canada Ltd. v. Kingsford Products Company, LLC (2021
FC 782).

Though surveys may sometimes be used in trademark cases, for example, to help judges reach conclusions as to the likelihood of confusion between marks (i.e. as to the initial
impressions of typical consumers), the court in this case rejected the survey altogether, for a number of reasons.

For example, the very content of the questions asked by that survey was an issue that warranted against accepting the results of the survey as valid, as were certain data manipulations upon analysis the results and producing the final report. The way the survey was held was also a problem for the court, as the survey allowed participants unlimited time to answer, something that was simply not conducive to obtaining “initial impressions” of those who responded. At the other end of the spectrum, the survey’s results were also tweaked by arbitrarily rejecting questionnaires filled too quickly by certain participants. In short, the court found the survey essentially asked the wrong question, in the wrong manner.

As to this last point and the format of the survey, the court objected to the holding of the survey on-line, by having participants simply fill a questionnaire on-screen, at their leisure, without sufficiently timing their responses to attempt at obtaining an idea of what their initial impressions were, when presented with certain trademarks. On that point, the court also held that the very format of such an online questionnaire was ill-suited to presenting participants with an adequate simulation of the kinds of circumstances where they might meet the trademarks at issue, for example on products, on store shelves, in actual stores.

All in all, the Federal Court held in Tokai that on-line surveys may be problematic when attempting to ascertain the likelihood of confusion between trademarks, especially when the goods or services at issue are provided or sold in brick-and-mortar establishments.

The Federal Court Imports Copyright Infringement by Inducement into Canadian Law

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The Federal Court recently provided us with an interesting copyright decision, in Bell Canada v. L3D Distributing Inc. (2021 FC 832), a case that dealt with devices called set-top boxes (“STB”) used to stream content on TVs. In that case, a group of Canadian companies was sued by content owners and licensees, to stop these defendants from continuing to market and sell their STB devices in Canada, and ideally also obtain some compensation based on infringement of copyrights.

To make a long story short, in 2016 the group of plaintiffs that included Bell and Videotron sued some Canadian businesses marketing STBs in Canada, based on fact that such devices were largely being used by purchasers to infringe copyrights as to pirated TV shows and movies. The plaintiffs basically argued that availability of STBs made it too easy for Canadian consumers, allowing them to find, download and watch pirated content on their TVs. Indeed, thanks to these devices and instructions provided by the defendants at issue, Canadians could too easily get round the usual predictions against availability of pirated content -hence the proceedings filed before the Federal court.

We should mention that the defendants at issue not only marketed STBs in Canada but did so by promotion and information that made it clear that the typical function and use of these devices was essentially to obtain access to pirated content. In short, there was nothing subtle about the fact that activities of the defendants relied heavily on benefiting from allowing consumers to infringe copyrights on pirated content placed online by third parties. Looking at the promotional and other materials produced by defendants, it was clear that the main use of the devices at issue was to secure access to pirated content, particularly once purchasers installed a third-party add-on recommended by the defendants to enable pirating.

The federal court started by concluding that the defendants had in fact infringed copyrights over thousands of series and movies, by essentially making them available by telecommunications to Canadians. For the court, lack of actual copying, uploading or downloading may be disregarded in a blatant case such as this, as the defendants basically made content available through their devices and activities. Even though the defendant did not actually do any of the specific acts reserved to copyright owners by the Canadian act, the court held that the defendants’ activities related to STBs basically amounted to making pirated content available, a conclusion which many now question, including it seems to go beyond the actual provisions of the Copyright Act.

Interestingly, the Federal court here also went as far as holding that these defendants infringed copyrights not only directly (by making pirated content available, as described above), but also by merely encouraging, or rather inducing, Canadian users who purchased STBs to seek, download and watch pirated content placed online by third-parties. This is new law for Canada, as the Canadian Copyright Act does not contain any provision dealing expressly with inducement as a basis for finding infringement, contrary to the Patent Act, for example. For the court, the fact that Canadian common law generally provides for inducement as a basis for liability justifies importing that legal concept into copyright law, notwithstanding the absence of such a concept in our piece of copyright legislation.

Based on these findings of infringement, the court granted injunctive relief (of course) and awarded the plaintiffs 31 million dollars in statutory damages, along with some punitive damages, for good measure. Ouch.

I should mention that, not too surprisingly, the decision at issue was the result of ex parte proceedings and was a default judgment. One may express doubts as to whether the result would have been the same had the defendants actually participated and made submissions.

At any rate, I guess we’ll just have to see whether Canadian jurisprudence does really continue to import here the concept of infringement by inducement in copyright matters.