Despite today’s advanced computing with powerful emerging technologies such as generative AI’s booming ChatGPT tool, there remains many software and data silos as well as “platform bubbles” which may impede the creation of new products and services by innovators and entrepreneurs in Canada. As further modernization of the copyright laws in Canada, Bill C-294 [See: https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-294/first-reading] amends the Copyright Act (Interoperability), to allow a person, in certain circumstances, to circumvent a “lock-out” technological protection measure (“TPM”) to make an embedded computer program lawfully interoperable with any follow-on device or component.
In practice, by amending certain interoperability provisions under the Act, Bill C-294 effectively broadens the existing interoperability or TPM exemption framework under the Act to recognize interoperability standards for today’s embedded computer systems (e.g., firmware, etc.) with implications for computerized devices (e.g., pacemakers, cars, etc.) and emerging IOTs which have embedded computer programs. Also, Bill C-294 creates a new regulatory certainty for secondary equipment manufacturers thereby reducing the negative effects of software and tech silos for industry in Canada as a policy objective including for research and innovation for Canadians.