Personally, I’m on a campaign to bring the fedora back in style but if you are an NFL fan you might choose to wear a baseball style hat with your favourite team’s logo prominently displayed (hey, it’s January 15 it’s about time for me to make a post relative to sports). If you have purchased this hat recently it’s likely to be made by Reebok, which is the genesis of a U.S. court case between the (deep voiced commentator) National Football League and Amercan Needle a hat manufacturer, with potentially far reaching implications which have been commented on widely in . . . [more]

My earlier post looked at Lululemon Athletica’s tongue-in-cheek special edition clothing line, named the “Cool Sporting Event That Takes Place in British Columbia Between 2009 & 2011 Edition.” The launch of that campaign invited a scolding from the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) and tiptoed through the provisions of the Olympic and Paralympic Marks Act (OPMA).

Luluemon reportedly seeks to increase its brand exposure and will offer the gift of yoga to Vancouver – and all its visitors – during the Olympics. However, its joint press release with yoga-centre operator Yyoga does not mention the word OLYMPIC, or WINTER, or . . . [more]

Yesterday, I abandoned my office for several hours to attend “The First Annual World’s Fair Use Day” at the Newseum in Washington D.C. It was organized by the D.C.-based non-profit consumer advocacy group, Public Knowledge. There is lots of information and coverage on this event at http://worldsfairuseday.org/. I will limit my comments to some personal musings (in chronological order as the day unfolded.) . . . [more]

I thought I knew everything about legal research.

I don’t (although I suspect Simon, Simon and Angela do).

And to my surprise, it was Wikipedia that was my source for new information (in particular Wikipedia’s entry on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council).

We all know that civil appeals from the Supreme Court of Canada to the Judicial committee of the Privy Council were abolished in 1949.

In telling students this, I think I inevitably left the (mistaken) impression, by inference, that one did not need to worry about noting up Supreme Court of Canada cases after 1949 . . . [more]

Canadian trade-mark applicants and their agents must continue to be mindful of a trend at the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) to compress timelines for trade-mark prosecution and proceedings.

After months of consultation period, CIPO has released a new Practice Notice on January 11, 2010 on extensions of time in trade-mark examination. Effective March 11, 2010, the Trade-marks Office will generally grant an applicant one (1) extension of time of up to a maximum of six (6) months to file a response to an examiner’s report, if the request is justified. No requests for any further extensions of time will . . . [more]

Today’s Calgary Herald reports the death of the distinguished Canadian legal author, John Ballem QC of Gowlings, at the age of 85.

Those of us who have had to refer to Ballem’s masterpiece, The oil and gas lease in Canada (now in its third edition) and his pioneering work on fiduciary duties in the 1963 Alberta Law Review, will likely not realize that he was also the author of fourteen novels (The Devil’s Lighter, The Dirty Scenario, The Judas Conspiracy (reissued as Alberta Alone), The Moon Pool, Sacrifice Play, The Marigot Run, Oilpatch Empire, Death Spiral, The Barons, Manchineel, . . . [more]

Among the most important pieces of legislation that came into force last January First is the Act respecting the Compilation of Québec Laws and Regulations, S.Q. 2009, c. 40 (version française : L.Q. 2009, c. 40).

Pursuant to this Act, all consolidated statutes published by the Québec Official Publisher have official status “whatever the medium used“, including of course those published online by the Publications du Québec. Consolidations of regulatory texts will have official status on January first 2012. In the mean time, certain regulations will have official status if so stated within the published document. . . . [more]

As everyone starts the year off with resolutions for self-improvement, I prefer to deflect by analyzing others’ flaws. This week provided several targets for deflection in the biotech world:

• New federal-level initiatives in the U.S. and China and state-level initiatives in North Carolina, Missouri, Arizona and Indiana (not to mention Québec’s new Biopharmaceutical Strategy) mean that Ontario has to up the ante if it wants to improve its ability to grow and attract top biotech talent.
• Policy makers and commenters need to look farther into the future to effectively regulate the coming revolution in reproductive genomics — “designer babies”

We might be used to seeing archived video footage of legal proceedings on the SCC site or through CPAC, but on YouTube?

Simon Fodden previous mentioned the initiative the United States District Court for the Northern District of California to upload the Proposition 8 appeal in Perry v. Schwarzenegger.

Well it seems that the objections aired over the broadcast have gained some support with a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. The term court order issued today states,

…permitting real-time streaming is stayed except as it permits streaming to other rooms within the confines of

We posted about the major cuts that Thomson-Reuters announced in early December to trim almost 2 % of its North American workforce. The blogosphere has noted the significant cuts made to Eagan’s library liaisons.

But we’ve seen no formal announcement or confirmation of the rumours of seventy five Carswell staff being let go from Thomson-Reuters’ Canadian legal operation, that was initiated just before Christmas. The rumours suggest that the cuts include twenty-five in the legal editorial group and that the downsizing may still be ongoing.

Funny that the Australians reported the news about the Canadian lay-offs while there’s . . . [more]

Our discussions of Iraq have tended to have focused on the news and the involvement of lawyers in matters of the justification of torture, so it’s nice to have a good news story, stemming from the Red Bulls, the 34th Infantry Division in the U.S. Army National Guard t, garrisoned at Rosemount, Minnesota. The Red Bulls are using web-based technologies to assemble online the law of Mesopotamia. . . . [more]

The Kingdom of Bahrain has launched the Bahrain Chamber for Dispute Resolution. This initiative of the Ministry of Justice and Islamic Affairs will deliver international ADR services in cooperation with the American Arbitration Association. TimesOnline’s Law Central has the story.

What makes this project interesting is that Bahrain has passed legislation ensuring that when parties agree to arbitration by the BCDR the result will be binding and beyond challenge in the Bahrain courts. Presumably, they’ll have better luck with their “privative” provisions than has been the case elsewhere.

At present the link to the BCDR opens only . . . [more]