Daniel Gervais focuses on international intellectual property law, having spent 10 years researching and addressing policy issues on behalf of the World Trade Organization (GATT), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) and Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) before entering the academy. Before joining Vanderbilt Law School in 2008, Professor Gervais was Acting Dean of the Common Law Section at the University of Ottawa, where he also served as Acting Dean from February 1, 2006 until July 31, 2006, and as Vice-Dean for Research from 2003 until January 2007. Professor Gervais practiced law in Montreal from 1985 to 1990 as an associate with Clark Woods and later as a partner with the technology law firm BCF. In 1990-91, he was a consultant and legal officer with the World Trade Organization, where he was actively involved in the TRIPS Agreement negotiations. In 1992, he joined WIPO and was promoted the following year to Head of the Copyright Projects section, where he prepared WIPO studies and international meetings on the impact of digital technology on copyright and neighboring rights. In 1995, Professor Gervais joined CISAC as Assistant Secretary General, and in 1997 he moved to the United States to become director of international relations at CCC, the largest reprographic rights organization in the world. He chaired the sectoral work on culture, communications and information at the Canadian Commission for UNESCO. Professor Gervais currently serves as a panelist (domain name) at the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Centre and was a consultant with the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). He has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Grenoble, Montpellier, Nantes and Strasbourg (CEIPI) in France; at the University of Liège; at the University of Haifa; and at the University of Puerto Rico, and a visiting scholar at Stanford Law School. He is a visiting lecturer at the University of Amsterdam and has lectured at the Institute of European Studies of Macau. He was the 2004 Trilateral Distinguished Scholar at Michigan State University. He received an Early Researcher Award from Ontario, Canada's Ministry of Research and Innovation, the only law professor in the province to receive the award in that round. He serves as Editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed Journal of World Intellectual Property.
Articles
IS PROFITING FROM THE ONLINE USE OF ANOTHER’S PROPERTY UNJUST? THE USE OF BRAND NAMES AS PAID SEARCH KEYWORDS (with Caprice Roberts, Paul W. Kruse, Glenn Perdue, and Martin L. Holmes), IDEA (2013)
This article begins with a basic question: Is Google’s profiting from the use of another’s...
Golan v. Holder: A Look at the Constraints Imposed by the Berne Convention, Vanderbilt Law Review en banc (2011)
One of the central issues in the Golan v. Holder litigation is the extent to...
The Landscape of Collective Management Schemes, Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts (2011)
This paper, based on a keynote talk at Columbia Law School, reviews the nature of...
The Rise of 360 Deals in the Music Industry, Landslide (2011)
360 deals can give record companies access to revenue from movie contracts, merchandise sales, and...
Cloud Control: Copyright, Global Memes and Privacy (with Daniel J. Hyndman), Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology Law (2011)
This paper examines the shift from the Internet connection paradigm to an amalgamation paradigm. Ultimately,...
Contributions to Books
The internet Taxi: Collective Management of Copyright and the Making Available Right, after the Pentalogy, The Copyright Pentalogy how the supreme Court of Canada shook the Foundations of Canadian Copyright law (2013)
This review of the five 2012 decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada (known as...
User-Generated Content and Music File-Sharing: A Look at Some of the More Interesting Aspects of Bill C-32, From "Radical Extremism" to "Balanced Copyright" : Canadian Copyright and the Digital Agenda (2010)
This chapter is not intended as an update, but rather as an addendum to my...
A Uniquely Canadian Institution: The Copyright Board of Canada, An Emerging Intellectual Property Paradigm (2008)
Several countries have fostered the growth of Collective Management Organizations (CMOs) through legislative initiatives in...
Intellectual Property and Human Rights: Learning to Live Together, Intellectual Property and Human Rights (2008)
Intellectual property and human rights must learn to live together. Traditionally, there have been two...
The Role of International Treaties in the Interpretation of Canadian Intellectual Property Statutes, THE GLOBALIZED RULE OF LAW: RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN INTERNATIONAL AND DOMESTIC LAW (2006)
The relationship between domestic intellectual property statutes and international law in growing in scope and...
Popular Press
The Google Book Settlement and International Intellectual Property Law, ASIL Insights (2011)
This short article considers the role that international law (WTO) issues played in the rejection...
The Google Book Settlement and International Intellectual Property Law, ASIL Insight (2011)
This Insight examines the Berne and TRIPS arguments raised in the case and evaluates the...
Unpublished Papers
APPLICATION OF AN EXTENDED COLLECTIVE LICENSING REGIME IN CANADA: PRINCIPLES AND ISSUES RELATED TO IMPLEMENTATION, Canadian Heritage (2003)
The report examines the advantages, disadvantages and constraints of using an extended collective license in...
COLLECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT AND NEIGHBOURING RIGHTS IN CANADA: AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE, Canadian Heritage (2001)
This document, prepared in 2001, surveys Canadian collectives, compares the Canadian situation to the situation...
Presentations
The Role of Copyright Collectives in Web 2.0 Music Markets, WIPO/Vanderbilt Law School Conference of Collective Management (2007)
The flow of P2P is not under control. The laws of physics that applied to...
Democracy, Technology and Social Justice, University of Ottawa (2003)
On the Internet, more information is available than ever before but the oversupply means that...
ELECTRONIC RIGHTS MANAGEMENT AND DIGITAL IDENTIFIER SYSTEMS, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) (1998)
The first part, entitled “Electronic Copyright Management: A Definition in Time and Space” discusses (a)...