Copyright Law and the Internet - The Tariff 22 Case

This article was originally published in Blakes Bulletin On Information Technology/Intellectual Property, July 2004

The Supreme Court of Canada recently released its decision in Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada v. Canadian Association of Internet Providerswhich has come to be known as the Tariff 22 case. This decision is the Court’s third recent copyright decision in what many refer to as the copyright trilogy (the other two cases were Galerie d’Art du Petit-Champlain v. Theberge("Theberge") and CCH Canadian Ltd.v. Law Society of Upper Canada ("CCH"), discussed in Dealing a New Hand to Copyright Users – The Supreme Court Considers Fair Dealing, Blakes Bulletin on Intellectual Property, May 2004).These three cases provide much needed guidance on a host of copyright matters ranging from the fundamental theories underlying copyright, to the limits of when copyright may be claimed, to the applicability of copyright in cyberspace.