The Value Is in the IP: Protecting Australian Agritech’s Real Asset
By Julius Melnitzer | July 31, 2026 Once the product is out in the field, the marginal cost of copying it is close to zero. That’s a textbook appropriability problem, and it’s more acute here than in most tech sectors — Dr Chris Vindurampulle Few industries are as woven into Australia’s economy and identity as agriculture, […]
Dissecting Intangible Assets’ Market Dominance
By Julius Melnitzer | July 9, 2026 A vast spectrum of industries now counts intangible property as a major part of their value — Matthew Zischka Ocean Tomo’s Intangible Asset Market Study for 2025 revealed that intangible assets constituted approximately 92 percent of S&P 500 market capitalization by year’s end. That represents a 75 percentage point shift from […]
AI Disruption in the Gaming Industry: An IP Perspective
By Julius Melnitzer | June 15, 2026 AI models have helped studios create [a host of gaming elements] or helped to create them faster and more efficiently, but they have also created uncertainty regarding IP issues, including ownership, authorship, infringement, and responsibility — Gurbir Sidhu From an intellectual property (IP) perspective, the emergence and evolution of […]
IP & Video games: Lots to protect
By Julius Melnitzer | June 8, 2026 Most video games entrepreneurs think about copyright or trademarks, and many don’t realize that IP protection in this sector can extend much further, such as, patents for technical systems, trade secrets for backend tools and data, design rights for interfaces, and contracts governing AI tools, user-generated content, vendors, […]
How Agentic Prior Art Searches Have Changed Patent Practice
“What stands out about agentic technology is the extent to which it has allowed penetration of a system that has so frequently seemed impenetrable.” — David Hughes It’s no surprise, perhaps, that the advent of AI-driven agentic prior art searches marks a turning point in patent law practice. How, after all, were mere humans going to […]
Fair Dealing: The Canadian Context
By Julius Melnitzer | May 11, 2026 “In Canada, fair dealing is a creature of statute with a closed list of eligible purposes. Courts have described it as a ‘users’ right’ that provides a ‘fsafety valve’ on the monopoly of copyright.” — Tamara Céline Winegust Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, China and most of Southeast […]
Fair Dealing: The Australian Context
“The fair dealing exception in Australia is limited to the purpose-based exceptions listed in the Copyright Act. If a use doesn’t fall within a listed purpose, fair dealing simply does not apply, regardless of fairness.” — Katrina Crooks By Julius Melnitzer | May 8, 2026 Australia’s iteration of the “fair use” doctrine — called “fair dealing”— […]
Can AI Prompts Attract Copyright?
By Julius Melnitzer | April 7, 2026 AI prompts may seem like new territory for the law, but in the end the very old principles that define originality work just fine — Vincent Bergeron For all the growing ubiquity of artificial intelligence in our society, its relationship to the law is still nascent. Although AI is […]
How Agentic Prior Art Searches Have Changed Patent Practice
By Julius Melnitzer | April 1, 2026 What stands out about agentic technology is the extent to which it has allowed penetration of a system that has so frequently seemed impenetrable. — David Hughes It’s no surprise, perhaps, that the advent of AI-driven agentic prior art searches marks a turning point in patent law practice. How, […]
Australia’s Plant Breeders Protection Regime: Promoting Innovation
“Breeders who make decisions without the benefit of patent attorneys’ advice risk not having the strongest protection for their rights and risk losing competitive advantages.” — Dr James-Robert Cram Plant breeding sits at the intersection of science, agriculture, and global trade – an intersection where intellectual property settings can either enable innovation or quietly undermine it […]