Inside Or Out: Jurisdiction In The Context Of Copyright

The application of the test for jurisdiction in the copyright context can sometimes be an exercise in gut feel. Luckily for litigants who prefer to make decisions based more on case law than feelings, the Divisional Court recently provided clarification on the application of the test for jurisdiction for statutory torts, like copyright infringement. The Ontario Divisional Court's decision in Pourshian v Walt Disney Company ("Pourshian"), an appeal of a motion for an order to stay the plaintiff's copyright infringement action on the basis of lack of jurisdiction, will hopefully take some of the guess work out of jurisdictional issues in the future.

Mr. Pourshian claims that, in 1998, when he was a student, he conceived the idea for a film in which five of the protagonist's anthropomorphized organs guide the protagonist's behaviour. Two years later, in 2000, while a student at the Faculty of Film and Television of Sheridan College, Mr. Pourshian wrote and produced a