I am a partner with Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP. I practice intellectual property law with a focus on domestic and foreign IP structuring, restructuring and litigation. BA (U of T), LLB (Western), LLM (GMU), Advanced IP/Tech Mediation and Arbitration (Stanford Law School) and Mediation and Conflict Management (Harvard), CLP Certified Licensing Professional, Fellow I.P.I.C., AV Distinguished Rating Martindale Hubbell, WTR 1000 international leading trademark lawyers, IP Star Managing Intellectual Property, Lexology Index (Sports & Entertainment). Law Society of Ontario Arthur Wentworth Roebuck Award. Adjunct Professor Osgoode Hall Law School.
Research
It is an oft recited truism that “ideas are the orphans of intellectual property”. In the current legal landscape, it is arguable that the same can be said of NILV and its related human resource capital.
The rapidity of technological innovation and attendant new channels of trade, the ever increasing demand for artistic and sports content, the ubiquitous internet and plethora of social media platforms, the cross-selling of the results and proceeds of entertainment and sports endeavours across a myriad of other goods and service sectors, the growing prominence of social media influencing as a successful business model, and the borderless nature of product and service marketing, have created an almost unquenchable demand for endorsements and the exploitation of publicity of and by sportspersons, celebrities and entertainers in their core and non-core performance sectors. Inconsequence, human resource capital becomes an almost incalculably valuable commodity.
It is evident that the law has not kept pace with the rapidity of these technological developments or the changing NILV human resource capital business models.
My research and dissertation examines whether traditional intellectual property and personality rights silos are able to offer a legal regime to protect an individual’s autonomy over his or her NILV and its value as human resource capital, or whether it might be time to view human biometric data in NILV as entitled to a new silo of recognized IP protection.
In addition, an unanticipated consequence of the rapidity of these technological developments and the changing NILV human resource capital business models, is that they have unintendedly equalized or leveled up disparities between male and female celebrity and athletic earnings. While female celebrities and athletes have traditionally earned lesser salary scales and revenue shares than their male counterparts, their more pervasive social media presence and audience engagement across the board in all age categories has drawn marketing dollars to them that serve to offset their lower pay-per-play. This unintended but policy positive effect of NILV on gender economic parity underscores the need for a recognized silo of intellectual property protection for human biometric NILV.