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The metaverse is the answer to escaping your couch without actually leaving it to do whatever you want in a paralleled virtual universe – hangout with friends, drive race cars, shop designer brands, buy digital land, or do just about anything else you can imagine. The metaverse may seem far-fetched, but so did smart phones when everyone was talking on their corded landlines not too long ago.

The metaverse parallels social media with concepts of engagement and world-wide connection, for both users and business. Both spaces allow for users and businesses to expand outside of their geographical area and establish a strong online presence. However, social media and the metaverse are not the same thing. Our current interactions on social media are engaged on a ‘push’ basis. Information, such as comments and likes, are pushed to us with notifications. We are also ‘pushed’ video and image ads. However, the metaverse will be less ‘push’ information and more of an embodied interaction with information and our environment. The metaverse will offer an immersive digital world that feels physical and tangible in nature. Interacting with metaverse has the opportunity to shift the internet in a new direction and pose new intellectual property rights for developers, contributors, and users.

Human interactions with technology

In the past few years, the use of social media has increased rapidly. A key feature of social media platforms and social media apps is the ability to interact with other people in ways that were not thought possible in previous generations.  With the click of a button, someone from the other side of the world can appear on a screen in front of you.

Technology and social media have not just given rise to platforms that facilitate human-to-human interaction: recently, advancements in technology have led to a rise in a new type of social relationship: human-to-computer interaction.  The interactions we have with technology are not just based on user input.  Technology has learned to respond to people.  It can communicate with us.  It can perform tasks.  It can learn our habits and tailor services to our needs.  It can learn to identify us.  It can assemble information and provide solutions to problems.  This ‘artificial intelligence’ (or AI) has become a key component in our daily social interactions.

This post is directed to entrepreneurs and developers who are building platforms incorporating features of social media networks, or building their own social media technologies, regarding design protection requirements in Canada. Several practice notices have been issued very recently by the Canadian Industrial Design Office, providing guidance on designs including colour and animated graphical user interfaces (GUIs), among others.

Social media channels represent an exciting medium to reach out to the public and potential collaborators. Social media can also play an important role in helping generate positive buzz for organizations seeking to develop a market for their products or…