In Optus v NRL, Australia’s Federal Court recently held that consumers had broad rights to “time shift” television programs, including via the use of remote recording and storage devices. The applicants were the AFL and the NRL, sporting organisations which had big plans for the...

This special focussing on internet policy in Australia provides a snapshot of developments on various topics (access, privacy, censorship) as a means of understanding better the state of play in Australia, and also how this compares to internet policy in other parts of the world, especially...

In 2007, Australia's Commonwealth Government took a dramatic new approach to the governance of remote Indigenous communities. The ‘Northern Territory Intervention' aimed to combat abuse and violence in remote Indigenous communities, and included far-reaching changes to welfare administration,...

This report presents findings from the third survey of the Australian component of the World Internet Project. The survey was conducted in 2011.This report provides an overview of the study, presenting a broad picture of the Internet in Australia, with comparisons to our earlier 2007 and 2009...

The effectiveness of trade mark protection depends on the enforceability of rights. However, little is known about how trade mark owners actually go about enforcing their trade marks in the civil courts. The few studies which have emerged recently show a high success rate for trade mark owners....

Consumer confusion lies at the heart of most actions for trade mark infringement. Statistically objective surveys are the most scientific way to get generalisable evidence about what consumers think and whether there is a case for confusion or potential confusion. However, only one in ten...

This submission responds to two proposals by the Australian government to address online copyright infringement (1) expanding secondary liability for copyright infringement (the doctrine of authorisation) to increase the ‘incentives’ for network access providers to ‘cooperate’ with...

This paper provides an overview of the history of intellectual property laws in Australia and New Zealand, and directions into existing and emerging scholarship in this area. It discusses the swings and roundabouts of convergence and divergence in copyright, patent and trade mark legislation and...

One of the great unknowns of patent policy is how much infringement goes on, and how much of that infringement leads to enforcement of an informal or formal kind. Our representative survey of over 3700 Australian inventors estimates that 28 per cent of inventions (which were the subject of a...