Shortlisted for the 2003 Walter Owen Book Prize

In this book, David Vaver examines how the modern law of copyright and moral rights is coping with the explosive growth in new technologies. He provides a detailed, authoritative analysis of changes to the Copyright Act and their impact on copyright holders and users, including educational institutions, libraries, and archives.
Copyright Law is written in a lively non-technical style. It examines in depth issues such as: What does copyright protect? What rights do owners have? What new rights have been introduced and how do they affect the public? What rights do users have? What are moral rights and how are they enforced? How are copyrights managed and how are they enforced? What pitfalls should be avoided in licensing? A thoughtful discussion is included on the origins, justifications, and likely future directions of this branch of the law in the light of international developments, as well as how current deficiencies may be cured.

David Vaver, MA (Oxon.), BA, LLB (Auck.), JD (Chicago), was appointed Professor of Intellectual Property Law at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, Toronto, in 2009 and is a board member of IP Osgoode. He is the Emeritus Reuters Professor of Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law in the University of Oxford, an emeritus fellow of St. Peter’s College, and the former director of the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre. He has researched and taught intellectual property law for forty years, previously at Osgoode, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Auckland. Professor Vaver founded the Intellectual Property Journal which he currently also edits, and is associated with the Chambers of Michael Silverleaf QC, 11 South Square, Gray’s Inn, London. Professor Vaver has written extensively on national and intellectual property law and policy, and his work is frequently cited by courts and legal writers. He
was the author of the first edition of this work and of Copyright Law (2000), both in Irwin Law’s Essentials of Canadian Law Series, a coeditor (with Marcel Boyer & Michael Trebilcock) of Competition Policy and Intellectual Property (Irwin Law, 2009), and editor of a five-volume collection of writings, Intellectual Property Rights: Critical Concepts in Law (Routledge, 2006). To mark his retirement from the University of Oxford, Professor Vaver was presented in 2010 with a Festschrift edited by Catherine Ng, Lionel Bently, and Giuseppina D’Agostino, The Common Law of Intellectual Property: Essays in Honour of Professor David Vaver (Hart Publishing, 2010).

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Beverley McLachlin was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada from 2000 to 2017. She is the first woman to hold that position and the longest-serving Chief Justice in Canadian history. Born in rural Pincher Creek, Alberta, McLachlin studied philosophy and law at the University of Alberta before being called to the bar in 1969. After teaching at the University of British Columbia, she was appointed a judge in 1981. Throughout her prestigious career, she has served on many courts, including the County Court of Vancouver, the Supreme Court of British Columbia, the British Columbia Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada. In 2019, McLachlin became a Companion of the Order of Canada, the highest honour within the Order. Her first novel, Full Disclosure, was an instant national bestseller.

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• Short-listed, Walter Owen Book Prize