Wilkinson, Margaret Ann --- "Battleground Between New and Old Orders: Control Conflicts Between Copyright and Personal Data Protection" [2008] ELECD 371; in Gendreau, Ysolde (ed), "An Emerging Intellectual Property Paradigm" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: An Emerging Intellectual Property Paradigm

Editor(s): Gendreau, Ysolde

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847205971

Section: Chapter 10

Section Title: Battleground Between New and Old Orders: Control Conflicts Between Copyright and Personal Data Protection

Author(s): Wilkinson, Margaret Ann

Number of pages: 40

Extract:

10. Battleground between new and old
orders: control conflicts between
copyright and personal data
protection
Margaret Ann Wilkinson1

INTRODUCTION
In 2005, the Federal Court of Appeal had the opportunity to consider the rela-
tionship between notions of privacy and conceptions of intellectual property in
BMG Canada Inc. v. John Doe.2 Justice Sexton, for the court, wrote:

Modern technology...must not be allowed to obliterate those personal property
rights which society has deemed important. Although privacy concerns must also be
considered, it seems to me that they must yield to public concerns for the protection
of intellectual property rights in situations where infringement threatens to erode
those rights.3

In the context of exploring the issues that were before the Court of Appeal in
that case, this chapter will explore three themes emanating from this para-
graph. First, Justice Sexton equates intellectual property with property rights
­ an increasingly prevalent rhetoric in an age when property rights holders
who have come into the ascendancy during the industrial age are challenged
by the recent migration of wealth from manufacturing to the internet, from the
industrial age to the information age. Second, Justice Sexton juxtaposes


1 The author has been supported in this work through funding received from the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Law student Vanessa
Bacher provided timely research assistance. The author would also like to thank the
reviewer of an earlier draft of this paper for most thoughtful suggestions.
2 BMG Canada Inc. v. John Doe, [2005] ...