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The Supreme Court's unanimous decision in CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada may have changed Canadian copyright law on three fronts. On the key notion of originality, the Court purportedly adopted a standard situated between the creativity and "skill & labour" extremes, which is skill and labour that is neither trivial nor mechanical in nature. However, any applied version of this standard would seem to be very close to the modicum of creativity standard adopted in the famous Feist decision by the US Supreme Court. On the notion of authorization, the Court considered that authorizing the performance of an act requiring the authorization of the copyright holder as a distinct right under s. 3. Clearly, this has an impact on any infringement analysis, but it may be relevant in other areas, including licensing and collective management. Authorization may be active or passive. However, merely providing means that may be used to infringe copyright but which also have other (non-infringing) uses is not an infringement of copyright under s. 3. On the question affair dealing, the Court adopted a non-exhaustive list of criteria to determine fairness (not unlike the codified criteria in s. 107 oj the US Copyright Act). It also interpreted research veiy broadly and seems to have created a hierarchy of exceptions placing fair dealing above other exceptions in the Act, which tend to apply to a specific category of users.
La décision de la Cour suprême dans l'affaire CCH Canadian c. Barreau du Haut-Canada a vraisemblablement changé le droit d'auteur canadien sur trois aspects. Le premier est la notion-phare d'originalité, que la Cour semble situer entre ce qu 'elle appelle la position extrême qui définit I Originalité comme la marque de la créativité de l'auteur et l'autre extrême, soit celui de l'effort et du labeur de l'auteur. Le lest retenu, soit celui de l'effort et du labeur mais seulement si ceux-ci ne sont ni triviaux ni « mécaniques » se rapproche en pratique du test défini par la Cour suprême des Etals-unis dans la fameuse affaire Feist. S'agissant de la notion d'autorisation, la cour la considère comme un chef distinct au niveau de la violation de l'art. 3, ce qui a nécessairement un impact en matière de contrefaçon,...