Supreme Court of Canada to Announce whether leave to be granted in CSI "Authorization" case

I was speculating about five weeks ago about whether the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) would grant leave to appeal in this case:

CMRRA-SODRAC Inc. (CSI) v. SOCAN, Sirius, Canadian Satellite Radio Inc., et al. (SCC no. 34092).


This involves SOCAN and CSI, and the issue of the territorial scope of the Copyright Act, and consideration of what constitutes the “authorization” of a reproduction of a work. At the current time, there is no summary on the SCC website.The Court will announce this Thursday Oct 20 at 9:45 AM whether it will grant leave to appeal in this case. 

If leave is granted, it will be interesting to see if this case is added to the already uniquely busy schedule of five (5) copyright case scheduled for two days, namely December 6 and 7, 2011. The only obvious aspect in common in all five of these cases is that they emanate from the Copyright Board.


The SCC can compress schedules and abridge normal time limits. However,  at this point, such an abridgment would require compressing a series of steps that normally takes about six months into less than two months. 


HK