Industrial design protection is an often overlooked form of protection that is a poor cousin of Copyright. For historical reasons Canadian law prejudices against certain authors who create designs which can be applied to useful articles. By virtue of Section 64(2) of the Copyright Act, RSC 1985, c C-42, if more than 50 copies of the articles are made by or at the direction of the owner of the copyright in the design then substantial copyright and moral rights protection is lost. Protection may be available under the Industrial Design Act, RSC 1985, c I-9 (IDA), a registry . . . [more]

If you have an insurable risk, there’s a good chance someone is willing to sell you a policy for it. We’ve all heard stories of celebrities insuring their body parts, but how about someone buying insurance protection just in case they are molested by a ghost or probed by aliens? Here are a few of the strangest insurance policies ever sold. You be the judge if people need them.

Alien Abduction Insurance

Now you can sleep at night knowing that you and your family will be protected against the financially devastating effects of an alien abduction for as little as . . . [more]

If you are a publisher and your e-book strategy is called EPUB or any of the likes, you are still stuck in the print era.

E-book formats and reader devices came with the promise to transform the way we consume books. However, those formats did not reinvent the book but they rather reinvented paper. They do not necessarily offer the possibility for a use case that is radically different from the use cases that we know from the world of print. True, it is cool and practical to take many more books than we can actually read while on vacation. . . . [more]

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to participate in presenting at a Webinar entitled The Firm Leader-COO Team: A Sensitive Balancing Act in Shared Responsibility. One of the questions that was asked by the registrants was this one:

What are the danger signs and which factors greatly impede the development of an effective Firm Leader-COO working relationship?

Here was my response.

One needs to keep in mind that the Firm Leader-COO team, in a sense, is two people who have been forced to work together – rather than having chosen the arrangement voluntarily. That is not intended to be . . . [more]

With all the excitement of a cosplay buff just ahead of Comic-Con, I anxiously awaited the Law via the Internet conference held in early October at Cornell University in picturesque Ithaca, NY. The 3 day event included the annual get together of the Free Access to Law Movement, CanLII’s peer group from around the world, as well as 30+ papers, presentations and panel discussions from a highly varied cross-section of legal information innovators. Sporting attire appropriate to the occasion (I went with a look that screamed I’d-prefer-to-dress-like-I-have-tenure-but-I-just-came-from-a-grant-request-meeting) I took it all in with a mix of delight and dissatisfaction.

On . . . [more]

This column was written by Dominique T. Hussey, L.E. Trent Horne and Edward (Ted) Yoo

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court of Canada has provided valuable guidance to patent agents and litigators as to how Canadian patents will be read and enforced (Teva Canada Limited v Pfizer Canada Inc, 2012 SCC 60).

The subject matter of the patent needs no introduction. Sildenafil is the active ingredient in VIAGRA, one of the world’s best known pharmaceutical products. There is no mystery or uncertainty as to the reason VIAGRA is prescribed.

Pfizer’s patent, however, was not as . . . [more]

For the second straight year pro sports in North America had a work stoppage. For many lawyers this is a catastrophe as they have no idea how to entertain clients without a game to attend.

What is interesting about business development is that we regularly go back to the tried and true without ever asking our clients if that is what they like to do. If every year for the past decade you have taken a client out for dinner for a steak dinner followed by a hockey or basketball game and every year billings go up slightly it must . . . [more]

It is nothing short of astonishing that more than 75% of South Carolina’s residents had their social security, credit card numbers and other personally identifiable information breached. News of the breach came in October, though it actually began in August. Who uncovered the breach? Usually it is the FBI, but this time it was the Secret Service that notified S.C. on October 10th.

How did the breach happen? Someone, as yet unknown, stole legitimate credentials from one of the 250 state employees with access to the South Carolina Department of Revenue (DOR) database.

Why was the attack so easy? Because . . . [more]

With the clean up from Hurricane Sandy now underway in the eastern United States, it is a good time to once again reflect on the discipline of risk management. Though I have not heard any first hand accounts as of yet, those firms in Sandy’s path that had engaged in some form of risk management planning were likely much better prepared for the effects of the storm and likely reestablished their business operations in a much shorter timeframe than those caught unprepared. While a full risk management program is multi faceted and includes a wide range of planning activities, there . . . [more]

As we are writing these lines, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law’s (UNCITRAL) working group III is meeting in Vienna to continue its work on online dispute resolution (ODR) or, rather, on establishing guidelines for potential ODR service providers. Since previously scheduled obligations have kept us from taking part in this year’s meeting, we’ll have to wait for feedback from other participants to comment on how things are moving forward.

In the meantime, however, those who wish to get a broader picture of the UNCITRAL negotiations and their potential impact are in luck since Professor Ronald A. . . . [more]

As law librarians many of us teach our users the best approaches to using the internet, which includes how to best construct a search. It may seem pedantic to talk about operators and specificity, but it does sometimes help to narrow the results to a manageable number. We know that most people do not look beyond the arbitrary 10 results on the first page of a Google result screen, so it is pretty important that those ten are the right ones. We teach this stuff on the assumption that we are working on a level playing field with the various . . . [more]

The law and the legal profession are moving towards greater systemisation much more rapidly and dramatically, than most realise. Professor Richard Susskind has said that the traditional law firm pyramid “has got to break up” and that law firms essentially have two branches: the specialist division and the process division.

Interesting examples of this change that is afoot, can be found in The UK Financial Times Innovative Lawyers 2012 Report. It highlights the fact that non-traditional approaches to providing legal services are gaining momentum.

Having innovative clients would have helped those interesting projects get off the ground. Similiarly, it . . . [more]