author archive



Amazon Again

by John N. Davis

January 18th, 2012

Canadian patent CA 2246933 was issued on January 17, 2012 for the Amazon 1-Click claim. Aaron Edgar and Grant W. C. Tisdall, in "Amazon.com's Canadian 'one-click' Patent on the Threshold… [more]

Return of the (9V) Battery Boy

by John N. Davis

December 1st, 2011

What can you do with a 9 volt battery? Not much, it seems.
Whenever we switch between daylight savings and standard time, we get reminders to change the batteries in… [more]

Namespaces

by John N. Davis

October 11th, 2011

Namespaces are used in XML to avoid the problems caused by what would, without the use of namespaces, be latent ambiguities.

A long time ago, in a place far away,… [more]

Old News

by John N. Davis

August 5th, 2011

This is a reflection on the technologies we use to read and cite "the news". For me, that involves both old news and breaking news. In any given week, I'm… [more]

Maritime Law Book has been re-designing its website. As of the date of writing, I hadn't seen an announcement. It was just something I happened to notice on May 3,… [more]

A Column About ZIP

by John N. Davis

April 13th, 2011

The ISO has been Studying ZIP

Annex A of "New Work Item Proposal on Document Packaging" (April 12, 2010), ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 N 1414, said:
Today many electronic documents… [more]

Walter Owen Book Prize

by John N. Davis

February 5th, 2011

The deadline is approaching for nominations for the Walter Owen Book Prize, awarded by the Foundation for Legal Research. This $10,000 prize rewards outstanding new contributions to Canadian legal literature.… [more]

Encodings

by John N. Davis

January 27th, 2011

Unicode 6.0.0… [more]

Unicode 6.0.0 was released on October 11, 2010. Mainstream journalists didn't take much notice, if the results of a search for "Unicode Consortium" in the Google News Archive

Christmas in 1594

by John N. Davis

December 24th, 2010

The law student of 1594 passed Christmas revelling to The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare. We know this because of the Gesta Grayorum which was printed in 1688 from a… [more]

More on the Language of Law Reports

by John N. Davis

December 22nd, 2010

This continues the comments on The Language of Law Reports. I couldn't figure out how to put images in a comment.
The following croppings are from Chadwyck-Healey's Early English Books… [more]

Reducing the 1-Click Patent Claim

by John N. Davis

December 10th, 2010

I've been giving some thought to patent law since Simon Chester posted "Appeal Granted by Federal Court for Amazon.com 1-Click Patent Application" (Slaw: October 14, 2010). The case is Amazon.com,… [more]

Vaughan on Haldane

by John N. Davis

September 24th, 2010

I've been distracted today by a book that arrived in the morning mail: Frederick Vaughan, Viscount Haldane: 'The Wicked Step-father of the Canadian Constitution' (Toronto: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal… [more]

SlawTips      

SlawTips Open Access Journals
Wednesday, February 8

There is good leagal content that doesn’t necessarily come in the neat packages that we usually look in.  Though our commercial legal database subscriptions have linked, vetted, edited, and easily. […] »»

Research

SlawTips Use join.me to Get on the Same Page Across the Web
Wednesday, February 8

When you need to collaborate on a document displayed on your screen, it’s great to have a colleague from down the hall come into your office and look over your … »»

Technology

SlawTips Top 10 Financial Errors: #8 Always Assume More Risk Than Needed
Friday, February 3

You should assess whether you can accept the financial risks associated with taking the matter, just as clients will assess whether they can (and will) pay your fee. Spend time at the beginning of the. […] »»

Practice

noted on Slaw    

MLB Selected Case Summaries    

These summaries of selected recent cases are provided each week to Slaw by Maritime Law Book.
More information.

  • Banks and Banking - Liability of banks to third parties - Negligence - General

    The plaintiffs were the former shareholders of a company that failed. They sued the defendant bank alleging that it breached its contract with the company and the plaintiffs and breached a duty ...

  • Actions - Cause of action - General principles - New or extended cause of action - Opening of floodgates

    The plaintiff and defendant worked at different branches of the same bank. The defendant’s common-law husband was the plaintiff’s ex-husband. Over a four year period, the defendant ...

  • Aliens - Definitions and general principles - Immigration consultants

    The Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants (CSIC) had been designated as the sole regulatory body of immigration consultants in Canada from 2004 until June 2011. On June 30, 2011, Bill C-35 came into force, which significantly amended ...

  • Criminal Law - Sexual offences, public morals and disorderly conduct - Public morals - Obscenity - Possession of child pornography

    The accused was convicted of making child pornography available and two counts of possession of child pornography (see [2010] Sask.R. Uned. 197). Subsequently, he was sentenced ...

  • Criminal Law - Procedure - Charge or directions - Jury or judge alone - Directions regarding pleas or evidence of witnesses, co-accused and accomplices

    Rowe was convicted by a jury of five offences. He appealed.

    The Ontario Court of Appeal allowed ...

  • Narcotic Control - Offences - Possession - General

    The accused wished to access marijuana for medicinal purposes but did not have an authorization to possess marijuana issued under the Marihuana Medical Access Regulations. He was notified that a package of marihuana addressed to him had been ...

  • Narcotic Control - General - Legislation - Exemptions - Medicinal marijuana

    McCrady, who had an application pending under the Marihuana Medical Access Regulations (MMAR) to possess and grow marijuana, was convicted of possession of marijuana (Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA), s. 4(1)). Hearn pleaded guilty ...

  • Criminal Law - Sentence - Trafficking in hashish or marijuana (incl. possession for purposes of trafficking)

    The accused pleaded guilty to one count of possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking. He was sentenced to 30 days’ imprisonment to be served intermittently and 11 months’ ...

  • Municipal Law - Powers of municipalities - Particular powers - Imposition and collection of taxes or fees 

    Catalyst Paper Corp. operated a paper mill in the District of North Cowichan. Catalyst objected to the tax rate that it paid compared to residential ratepayers. In 2009, the ...


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