Monday’s Mix

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from more than 80 recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible.

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Risk Management & Crisis Response 2. David Whelan 3. ABlawg.ca 4. Barry Sookman 5. First Reference

Risk Management & Crisis Response
More complaints and more investigations: highlights from CIRO’s inaugural Enforcement Report

It has been almost a year since the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) and the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada (MFDA) amalgamated to continue their operations as the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO).As the successor to IIROC and MFDA, CIRO is the national self-regulatory organization that oversees all investment dealers, mutual funds dealers and trading activity on Canada’s debt and equity marketplaces. …

David Whelan
Audience Confusion

Our law libraries are what we choose to make them. Resources are finite and so we make choices to use those resources. It was interesting to see that discussion of choices play out in some recent news involving law libraries and legal information access. When we make a choice about how we deliver information or what resources we will invest in a particular audience, we are almost necessarily making choices not to do other things. …

ABlawg.ca
ABlawg: Year in Review 2023

ABlawg had another very prolific year, publishing 81 posts in 2023. Our site had a total of 838,001 visits from 222,372 visitors this year. We saw a particularly busy fall with 13 posts in November, 12 posts in October, and 8 posts in September, averaging out to just over 1 post every three days. Remarkably, in the period from the last week of September to the first week of December, ABlawg published a post on 32 out of a potential 50 days! …

Barry Sookman
Do generative AI inventions and works qualify for patents and copyrights? The Thaler and SURYAST decisions

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems and in particular generative AI (GenAI) systems have raised the question as to whether technical advances in the useful arts or synthetic content generated using these tools can qualify for patent or copyright protection. Recent decisions in both the patent and copyright fields have denied protection for otherwise patentable inventions and copyright works where the sole claimed inventor or author is identified as an artificial intelligence system. The recent UK Supreme Court decisions in Thaler (Appellant) v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks [2023]UKSC 49 and the US Copyright Review Board in Refusal to Register SURYAST are illustrative. …

First Reference
Top 10+ First Reference Talks blog posts for 2023

The end of the year means that we have reached the time when we like to look at the year in review. There is no shortage of topics to write about under the employment law, payroll, and internal controls banner. However, on the First Reference Talks blog, we’ve covered some hot topics under these banners throughout the year. The most viewed and read blog post for 2023 was Ensuring fairness and thoroughness in workplace investigations by Belle Yuan, HR consultant, Strategywise HR. Workplace investigations have become important in recent years. A workplace investigation gives employers the opportunity to identify and correct discrimination, harassment or misconduct within the workplace before the situation escalates to litigation. Finally, a proper workplace investigation can limit exposure to adverse legal findings and costs. …

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*Randomness here is created by Random.org and its list randomizing function.