Also in the news: NTP, the company that secured a $612.5 million settlement from Research In Motion (RIM) in 2006, has sued six smartphone manufacturers - Google, Apple, Microsoft, HTC, LG Electronics and Motorola.

Two interesting articles. First, Quebec has applied its regulations requiring it to pay the lowest price available in the other provinces for generic drugs, slashing to 25% of the brand price to match Ontario regulations.

This Globe and Mail article has a pretty good summary of where things have ended up in the generic drug/pharmacy conflict with the ON government.

A footnote from my book:

Braithwaite and Drahos state that business regulatory contests are fought at the level of principles rather than details because “the informational demands of rule systems would make any contest at this level intolerably complex. Trade negotiators cannot, for example, walk into rooms in Geneva armed with their respective Telecommunications Acts under their arms and say to their counterparts ‘this is what we want.’ Often they will have very little idea about the details of their domestic systems. (One US trade negotiator told us that US trade people were ‘ignorant’ of intellectual property law. The US overcame this by sending several intellectual property specialists as part of its negotiating team on TRIPS.)”. Braithwaite and Drahos, GBR, supra note 13 at 527. Without the knowledge and detailed pre-existing discussions in the WIPO and other contexts, the TRIPs Agreement could not have achieved its high level of detail

A short but interesting note: The Spanish ambassador to Canada gave an interview last week where he said the prospects for an agreement are positive, but he highlighted three sticking points: agriculture, government contracts (specifically provincial government contracts), and intellectual property.

The headline on the National Post's website right now is "Industry minister admits to breaking copyright law to build iPod collection."

Here's an update by Andre Picard that does a reasonable job of trying to update the ON situation across a wide range of topics (which is not that easy to do) ;)

Ontario’s backroom deals make for drug-policy chaos