This week in biotech was all about the wisdom of the crowds:

The crowd comprising Canada’s Natural Resources Committee, including Conservative MPs, in order to maintain our domestic capability to produce isotopes for medical imaging and treatment.

The crowd of VenGrowth investors spoke clearly in favour of the funds’ deal with Covington, approving the transaction by a wide margin on 4 of the 5 votes, according to the Financial Post.

The crowd of recent biotech IPOs, however, is telling us that we are still in a challenging environment for the public markets. Anacor, Zealand and Zogenix , lowering their . . . [more]

Location-based tools and offerings have been a growing trend on the web. We haven’t yet felt the full impact of this movement in the legal world, but recent developments by Google, Facebook and others will likely accelerate the process. Here are a few examples of location services and their potential impact in the legal context: 

Google Places 

In late October 2010, Google introduced “Place Search”, a new kind of search result that places more emphasis on local businesses with a “bricks and mortar” presence. The change alters the results web users see when they perform a Google search for the . . . [more]

There are thousands of sites on the Internet that offer free and for-pay clip art, but many force you to deal with loads of pop-ups and advertising. Don’t bother with them! Your first and only stop—and the absolute best online source for free clip art, photos, animations and sounds—should be the Microsoft Office Online Clip Art and Media page. It has thousands of free images and media files, all easily searchable by keyword and topics. Many of the photos are of professional quality.

Don’t forget to visit the Microsoft Office Online Clip Art and Media page the next time you . . . [more]

Today Justice Michael Kelen of the Federal Court handed down a significant decision in DONNA JODHAN v. ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CANADA. Ms Jodhan sought a declaration under section 18.1 of the Federal Courts Act that the standards implemented by the federal government for providing visually impaired Canadians with access to government information and services on the Internet, and the way in which those standards are implemented, denied her equal access to government information and services, and thereby violated her rights under section 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. . . . [more]

Need gift ideas for a geeky lawyer? Or, perhaps, are you a geeky lawyer looking to subtly pass on suggestions for a gift via, say, a pointer to a blog post? Look no further: here’s a tech-inspired list that any geek (lawyer or not) would be happy to receive:

BookArc for iPad. The BookArc for iPad provides the perfect stand for your iPad. Four positions let you position the iPad in exactly the position you want, and the device makes a perfect combo with the Bluetooth keyboard for the iPad.

StealthArmor for the iPhone 4. Add a bit of . . . [more]

In his July 30, 2010 posting, Plus Ça Change, Dan Logan of Torys talked about the difficulty of addressing the implications of change as part of a long term outsourcing arrangement. Dan referred to the results of a recent Gartner Group survey that indicated:

• 55% of organizations have renegotiated their outsourcing agreement terms within the lifetime of the contract;
• 15% of the renegotiations occurred within the first year;
• 23% of the organizations did not expect to enter into the renegotiations; and
• nearly 8 in 10 outsourcings will go through renegotiations.

The Gartner Group survey identified one of the major . . . [more]

U.S. attorneys are being invited to adopt volumes of the Federal Reporter in a current Law.gov digitization project from PublicResource.org. The adoption campaign is being called Yes We Scan. PublicResource.org is a non-profit organization that received the Project 10^100 Award from Google and is digitizing the Federal Reporter by “double keying” all text. Double keying involves the entire text being manually typed in twice with discrepancies being checked, and then the full text being reviewed by law students and legal professionals before being certified. The Law.gov project is meant to make U.S. primary legal materials more available.

From . . . [more]

In another act of direct democracy, 52.9% of the Swiss voting public yesterday approved a referendum proposal to automatically expel foreigners convicted of various crimes. The Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police press release reads, in part, as follows:

The people and the cantons have today adopted the popular initiative on the expulsion of foreign criminals. In future, foreign nationals who have committed one of the criminal offences named in the text of the initiative should automatically lose their right of residence and be deported to their country of origin. Federal Councillor Simonetta Sommaruga will set to work on

Toronto’s first Webcom was held on November 3^rd. The conference, in its ninth iteration in Montréal, brought together a diverse group from various information professions – communications and technology folk rubbed shoulders with librarians, consultants and marketing executives. We were treated to an equally diverse range of speakers. The program looked at social networking, collaboration and a wealth of case studies in the application of social media in the enterprise. Connie Crosby did us proud with a lightning presentation of social media tools in the enterprise. 

Shel Holtz started the day with Tactical Transparency : the Value of . . . [more]

Last week I covered the Vigna v. Levant case and mentioned that comments are a poor way to gauge readership for the purposes of damages, which some readers agreed with.

A recent article in the Alberta Law Review by Matthew Nied discusses this further, Damage Awards in Internet Defamation Cases: Reassessing Assumptions About the Credibility of Online Speech. Nied is a recent UVic graduate, former Law is Cool contributor, and author of the Defamation Law Blog, which is currently on hiatus while he clerks at the B.C.S.C.

Nied proposes that given the hyperbole frequently found online readers . . . [more]

The US Department of Homeland Security is in the process of seizing control of a number of domains that infringe on copyrighted media or “enabling selling counterfeits of trademarked goods.” Here’s the screen capture from the BitTorrent Search Engine Torrent-finder.com, post capture:

TorrentFreak has a running list of other seized domains. And here’s a quote from the Torrent-finder owner:

“My domain has been seized without any previous complaint or notice from any court!” the exasperated owner of Torrent-Finder told TorrentFreak this morning.

“I firstly had DNS downtime. While I was contacting GoDaddy I noticed the DNS had changed.