The French language constitutes the foundation of Québec’s identity and of a distinct culture that is open to the world.

It’s December so Christmas, Hannukah and other holidays are right around the corner. For law professors, law students, judges and court staff this is a relief. And the same is certainly true for most lawyers. However, for lawyers that have cases on reserve at the Supreme Court of Canada, the last two weeks of December can be a nerve-wrecking time.

In the last few years, the Supremes have saved some of their biggest cases as a pre-Christmas holiday gifts for all of us SCC-watchers. In 2009, they gave us Grant v Torstar, 2009 SCC 61. The next year, . . . [more]

The official report of the October 2012 meeting of the Working Group on Electronic Commerce of UNCITRAL is now online as the first document at this site. (16 pages including formalities)

You will recall that the project is looking for international rules to govern the creation and use of electronic transferable records (ETR), that is, documents that entitle their holder to the delivery of goods or money. The meeting decided that there was enough interest in the topic among businesses and member states to pursue the topic further.

At the outset, the group determined that the elements of negotiability . . . [more]

Penny Collenette The tragic fire in the Bangladeshi factory recently sent shivers down the spines of those who research and work in the area of Business and Human Rights, an area that reaches far beyond the limits of CSR (corporate social responsibility). At a two day conference beginning on December 4^th in Geneva, nearly 1000 corporate and NGO leaders, lawyers, academics and politicians, will gather to discuss ways in which the two sectors of business and human rights can partner together to avoid human rights abuses and violations.

Since most information these days is generated, communicated and stored electronically, those who need access to a person’s information need access to the person’s information systems. That access may require a password and perhaps a means of decrypting the information. To what extent can the person with a legal right or even duty to access the information compel disclosure of these access methods?

In Ireland, a receiver is investigating the corporate and personal affairs of Sean Quinn in his dealings with the Bank of Ireland. The High Court of Ireland has ordered that several members of the Quinn family turn . . . [more]

I have always loved law reform commission reports. They are great sources for legal research. Many of the reports provide historical background on an issue and you can often find comparative information about how other jurisdictions have responded to a legal problem.

This past month, 3 law commission reports from England and New Zealand caught my attention for how they incorporated a comparative law approach:

• The Law Commission of New Zealand released an Issues Paper on the use of financial penalties by enforcement agencies to punish corporations and individuals for breaches of the law. The document briefly examines the situation

. . . [more]

The Queen’s Bench for Saskatchewan just granted an injunction restraining a former employee from competing against his former employer, soliciting the employer’s clients, and using any of the employer’s confidential information he garnered while working with the employer.

Last week the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) met in Geneva to further Member States’ negotiations on several matters.

WIPO published its SCCR 25 conclusions this week, and they are summarized in its SCCR 25 Update. The outcome of the negotiations is progress on three points: work toward a legal instrument to benefit visually impaired or print-disabled persons—the most concrete outcome, it appears (and attaining Canada’s endorsement); exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives and for educational institutions; and the protection of broadcasting organizations.

From the SCCR 25 Update:

Negotiations advanced to the

. . . [more]

You may remember the Belgian newspapers’ lawsuit to prevent Google from linking to their sites, or from running short extracts from their sites in a Google News aggregation – a lawsuit that (if I recall correctly) the papers succeeded in, then found that they had a lot less traffic on their sites, so they made an arrangement with Google. It appeared that they really had intended to dip their ladles into Google’s revenue stream. It’s not clear how well they succeeded.

German newspapers seem to be taking a different route but probably to the same intended destination. They have apparently . . . [more]

I have a question that I’m hoping I can crowd-source here at Slaw, or perhaps Slaw-source. I have asked several friends and acquaintances and have yet to get a satisfactory answer. Charity as a legal concept dates back to 1601 and the Statute of Charitable Uses 1601 (aka. Statute of Elizabeth) wherein the preamble to the act contained the first statutory definition of charitable uses. Since that time the nature and scope of charities has changed dramatically; to the point where some have become leery of large charities that are run more like a business than a charity. This leads . . . [more]

Initiated in 2006, the Early English Laws project

aims to produce new editions of all legal codes and treatises produced in England between the reign of Æthelberht of Kent and Magna Carta (1215).

The results are impressive so far: high quality digital images of the manuscripts, transliterations, philological notes, translations, and scholarly commentary, all of which can be compared line by line in the very nice interface. Here is Aethelbert’s Code, which the project describes as:

This law-code is thought to be the one Bede attributes (Historia ecclesiastica, 2.5) to King Æthelberht of Kent (560–616). It has survived in

. . . [more]

Here is a summary article from Outlaw.com, reviewing the law in the UK and elsewhere as to whether Google’s ‘autocomplete’ function for search topics could be defamatory if one or more of the suggested completions for the search term entered had a nasty meaning. A number of countries have held Google liable, including France and Japan. The brief linked to here concludes that there would probably not be liability in the UK.

The Australian courts have followed the French – but not the UK opinion mentioned above – and have found Google liable in defamation for the suggestions that . . . [more]