The 1954 Hitchcock oeuvre, based on Cornell Woolrich’s 1942 short story, “It Had to Be Murder”, can be a marvellous mix of many metaphors and analogies. To some, its underlying theme is voyeurism, which may be the case at least in part, but the idea of the rear window view offers much more. It can apply to innumerable scenarios, including legal and professional publishing.

I have enjoyed and occasionally cited Peter Drucker’s notion of trying to predict the future being akin to driving down a country road at night with no lights, while looking out the rear window, . . . [more]

This is the second in a series of blogs on how U.S. copyright law has, with the emergence of open access to research and scholarship in the digital era, slipped into an unconstitutional state because it can no longer be said, in the case of science, “to promote the progress of science and useful arts” (U.S. CONST. art. 1, § 8, cl.8.). Rather, the law is called upon to constrain such progress. These shortcomings apply no less trenchantly to Canada’s Copyright Act, as well as to copyright laws in most other jurisdictions. It is the U.S. Constitution’s particularly pointed wording . . . [more]

Upon writing Practicalities of Securing a Law Book Publishing Agreement, I pondered on an aspect of that actual or potential experience which was addressed therein in only four bullet points, namely the issue of what is expected from publishers. It is the publisher, for the most part, which sets the rules of the game and drives the contractual conditions and process. As this is often a corporate entity negotiating with an individual, who is normally not represented by a publishing agent or a media lawyer, the parties are rarely equal, in terms of power and resources. There is . . . [more]

A short history of the origin of the Special Lectures compiled primarily from the prefaces of the first three Special Lectures on their 76th anniversary.

The 2019 Special Lectures – One of the great traditions of the Law Society

The Special Lectures for 2019 have been announced. Once again the Law Society of Ontario will use the Special Lectures to help guide the legal profession through a period of momentous change. The first Special Lectures were held to educate the members of the Bar to deal with the massive changes in the law triggered by the needs of the war . . . [more]

I read a Linkedin posting by lawyer and consultant, Simon Haigh, asking “Which book is in you?”, perhaps the correct assumption being that many in and around the legal profession, inter alia, have, deep within them, a desire to commit their experience and expertise to the written word. A reaction from some at this point will be that nobody writes or reads books any more, nor should they. Indeed, published articles have seen one commentator’s headline pronounce that “lawyers should stop doing legal research”, while another’s boasts “Hire me. I won’t work hard for you”; . . . [more]

The jurisdiction in which it makes the most sense to reform copyright law so that it supports, rather than deters, access to research and scholarship is the United States. After all, the country’s Constitution empowers Congress “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” The only other thing the Constitution seeks to “promote” is the country’s “lasting Welfare.”

Yet U.S. copyright law today violates this constitutional imperative. The evidence that copyright law is not promoting the progress of science comes from . . . [more]

During the first week of June this year, Canada’s Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology issued its Statutory Review of the Copyright Act Report, after an exhaustive and expensive Canada-wide polling of opinion. The result of a legislated five-year review of copyright, the report’s first recommendation is to strike this review mandate from the legislation. More than one witness pointed to how the conventional legislative reform process is working just fine.

That duly noted, if with a touch of irony, I’d like to focus my attention on a pair of consecutive recommendations, beginning with number 16: That the . . . [more]

For reasons that I barely remember with clarity, I am the owner of a pitifully small number of shares in two companies that are participants in law, tax and professional publishing. I worry, however, that I, personally but unintentionally, might be doing harm to the law publishing business.

It’s not that in any way the expression of my opinions can hurt them, nor can I do so by my abilities in clever financial wizardry, nor am I able at all to affect their managements or shareholders; it is much more subtle and subliminal than that. Quite simply, my wagers on . . . [more]

In the 1940s during World War II, I remember the war news being mostly about the war in Europe and very little news of the war in Asia. The bombing of Europe dominated the North American radio news and newspapers. Apart from the atomic bombs, I do not remember news items about the bombing of Japan which was extensive.

Today some of our news media are again ignoring some of the news from Asia. For example, “Uzbekistan’s growth rate of 8 percent is one of the world’s highest.” The population of Uzbekistan is 32 million. We do get some news . . . [more]

(I’m very pleased to welcome Antoine Dusséaux from Doctrine as a guest contributor on this post. You can read more about and from Antoine below.)

Given my job (CEO at CanLII – saved you a click ) and law degree from a civil law program, I often get to talk about the differences between legal information in Québec compared to the rest of Canada.

I was an intellectual property (IP) lawyer before joining CanLII and although I wasn’t a litigator per se, I was routinely involved in IP cases before the Federal Court. Before that, I did a bit of . . . [more]

One common interpretation of intellectual property law is that it is not so much about protecting a creator’s natural law property rights (as is the case with bicycles and beachfront properties). Rather, intellectual property law is about motivating individuals to create and invent for the benefit of all. It has been carefully structured and revised over the years, by this reading, to spur on individual and corporate investment in fostering and consuming novelty. In the eighteenth century, when intellectual property took its modern legislative form, the intent was boldly declared to be the encouragement of learning and to promote the . . . [more]

New Mexico is one of the few U.S. States where the official publishing of legislation and case law is centralized in the hands of a specialized enterprise agency, the New Mexico Compilation Commission (NMCC), created in 1941. Over the last fifteen years, the State of New Mexico has been its own self-publisher of its official laws. NMCC has been providing three distinct online services: its agency website for posting slip opinions, formal and unreported opinions and new court rule amendments on behalf of the Supreme Court of New Mexico; a free, word-searchable online database of unannotated statutes at the request . . . [more]