This site is about technology, copyright, artificial intelligence, and privacy law.
Here is a speech I prepared for the JusticeNet Advisory Board Meeting – June 8, 2026 Introduction For more than half a century, access to justice has been one of the most persistent challenges facing legal systems in Canada. Governments have funded legal aid. Courts have simplified procedures. Law societies have promoted pro bono services. Legal clinics have expanded their reach. Yet despite these…
I had the privilege of appearing before the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology (INDU) which is studying Opportunities, Risks, and Regulation of AI in Canada’s Strategic Industries . My opening submission and opening remarks are set out below. Madam Chair and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear today. I am senior counsel with McCarthy Tetrault and a member…
I recently had the opportunity to present to ALAI my copyright developments over the past year . The presentation was accompanied by a detailed paper that canvasses the most important Canadian (and selected international) decisions shaping copyright law in 2025–2026. The presentation walked through the major areas of copyright law where courts have been particularly active, including: How courts…
In a bombshell of a case, a Quebec Court recently overturned an arbitration decision based on the arbitrator’s use of generative artificial intelligence in writing reasons for decision. The decision in Association des ressources intermédiaires d hébergement du Québec (ARIHQ) c. Santé Québec Centre intégré universitaire de santé et de services sociaux du Centre-Sud-de-l Île-de-Montréal, 2026 QCCS…
The U.S. Supreme Court released an important decision on the scope of U.S. secondary liability for copyright infringement applied to ISPs in Cox Communications, Inc. et al. v. Sony Music Entertainment et al., 607 U.S. - S.Ct. -2026 WL 815823. The syllabus of the court summarized the case and the court s opinion are set out below. My comments on the case follows the summary of the Cox v Sony…
In A.B. c. Google , 2026 QCCA 157, the Quebec Court of Appeal held that Google could incur liability under Quebec’s Act to establish a legal framework for information technology (the “IT Framework Act”) for refusing to de-index hyperlinks to defamatory content after acquiring knowledge of its unlawful character. The Court distinguished the Supreme Court’s decision in Crookes v. Newton ,…
The rapid growth of generative artificial intelligence has raised fundamental questions about whether prompts used to instruct AI systems can attract copyright protection. Courts worldwide are now beginning to address a variety of questions related to AI and copyright and have started to examine whether AI prompts constitute original works or merely unprotectable ideas or other subject matter. A…
Introduction The regulatory landscape related to artificial intelligence continues to evolve. For regulated entities like Canadian banks and insurance companies and their foreign affiliates, for federally regulated credit unions, and for Canadian affiliates of foreign banks and insurance operating in Canada (“FIs”), OSFI Guideline E-23 – Model Risk Management (2027), which will come into force on…
Intro (AI human readers) This year-in-review highlights the blog posts on barrysookman.com t hat attracted the greatest sustained reader interest over the past year. Taken together, these posts reveal clear trends in what readers are most focused on: AI copyright litigation and enforcement, the legal status of AI training and outputs, the intersection of technology and intellectual property, and…
In a recent decision, In re OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litig. , 2025 WL 3635559 (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 15, 2025) District Court Judge Stein ruled, for the first time in AI copyright litigation, that crawling a website in violation of a robots.txs website code does not infringe the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. The New York court also confirmed in a pleadings motion ruling that…