One of the things I enjoy about reading the Language Log, a cooperative blog by academic linguists, is the ease with which some of the authors slip into high dudgeon. (I suppose I might be like that, too, if my subject were language, in which everyone is an expert.) The latest target of Geoff Pullum’s indignation is U.S. Supreme Court Justice Kennedy, who, it turns out, doesn’t know his active from his passive, when it comes to voice.

The offending passage occurred in the judge’s dissent in Jones v. United States 526 U.S. 227 (1999) where Kennedy is interpreting a . . . [more]

Cross-posted on The AvoidAClaim blog (www.avoidaclaim.com)

As part of a brief endorsement dated November 3, 2009 in RE: IN THE ESTATE OF Evelyn O’Reilly, et. al., Justice D. M. Brown of the Superior Court Of Justice–Ontario provided some useful direction on the form and content of an order in applications to prove a lost will under Ontario Rule 75.02. Ontario lawyers handling this issue on estate matters will find Brown J.’s comments helpful. . . . [more]

University of Toronto law professors Ben Alarie and Andrew Green have posted a draft of a new paper to the Social Science Research Network.

The paper is entitled Interventions at the Supreme Court of Canada: Accuracy, Affiliation, and Acceptance:

“Do interveners matter? Under Chief Justice McLachlin the Supreme Court of Canada has allowed an average of 176 interventions per calendar year and interveners have cumulatively made submissions in half of the cases heard by the Court. This level of activity suggests that interveners are doing something. But what is it that they are doing?”

“In the abstract, there are

♫ If it should chance to be
We should see
Some harder days,
Empty-larder days,
Why grouse?
Always a chance we’ll meet
Somebody to foot the bill…♫

Lyrics and Music by Lionel Bart, from Oliver!

Ever trying to put a positive spin on a negative situation, the Legal Services Society of British Columbia has just announced that it has reduced 58 positions arising from replacing its regional centers in Kamloops, Prince George, Kelowna, Surrey and Victoria with local agents and an expanded, province-wide call center.

Civil law advice programs such as the LawLINE (the Society’s telephone legal advice service) will . . . [more]

Last Wednesday, the The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta published two documents on privacy and management of the H1N1 pandemic. This post invites critical thought about the substance of these documents.

One document, for employers, is entitled Privacy in the Time of a Pandemic: Guidance for Organizations. The other, for employees, is entitled Privacy in the Time of a Pandemic: A Fact Sheet for Employees.

Both documents argue that private sector privacy laws “apply . . . [more]

I am amazed that the three minutes extracted from an interview that I gave in the summer of 2009 with the thought that parts of it would be used in a tribute video to be shown at the 2009 AALL Convention has caused such a kerfuffle. [Ed. note: see Berring’s Scepticism on the Future of Free Legal Information, Berring, CanLII and Kobe Beef, Berring, free legal information, and making good choices] (Glad to see that someone used one of my favorite words). The context of the remarks matters because they were meant to be light in tone. . . . [more]

After three weeks rest and relaxation, I flew to Thunder Bay for two days of “outreach”, two days of what turned out to be a valuable glimpse into how residents of the northeast experience law. We’ll be following up with more specific consultations in our projects, but I ended up with pages of comments and questions that will become part of our analysis in our family law and vulnerable workers projects in particular. Comments that cut across the groups I met suggest a couple of possible new LCO projects. . . . [more]

There seems to be an increasing number of positions for librarians in the area of copyright and licensing.

IFLA (located in The Hague) is currently looking for a Copyright Policy Officer. The University of Michigan has an opening for the Head of Electronic Acquisitions and Licensing. The Ontario Colleges Library Service has an opening for an Electronic Resources Librarian (in Toronto).

The blog www.copyrightanswers.blogspot.com now lists such positions — if you are interested, further info and links are in the blog. And if you know of other positions, please share them. . . . [more]

Google’s new music search, Discover Music, has launched — but not in Canada. Partnering with imeem, lala, iLike, Pandora and Rhapsody, all music providing sites, Google will now determine whether your search has a musical aspect and, if so, throw up a result box that lets you listen to an excerpt of the music and choose to purchase it, if that is possible. There’s a video on the site linked to above that illustrates this.

Because of copyright issues, none of the partner providers is able to supply music online in Canada, and, consequently, Google’s . . . [more]

CIPO announced a new Practice Direction on the test that the Patent Office will apply in assessing obviousness in light of Rothstein J.’s judgment for the Court in Apotex Inc. v. Sanofi-Synthelabo Canada, Inc. [2008 SCC 61]

The four-step approach to obviousness adopted by the Court is as follows:
(1) (a) Identify the notional “person skilled in the art”;
(b) Identify the relevant common general knowledge of that person;
(2) Identify the inventive concept of the claim in question or if that cannot readily be done, construe it;
(3) Identify what, if any, difference exists between the matter cited as . . . [more]

This past week was fantastic for Toronto biotech. We hosted the 50th Anniversary of the Gairdner Awards, the OGI-IDT Synthetic Biology Symposium and Canada’s first Science Policy Conference. These events provided the opportunity to hear some big names do some big thinking… and the opportunity to reduce all those big thoughts to 140-character tweets @crossborderbio. Here are a few items from the Cross-Border Biotech Blog that got in on the fun as well:

• Bruce Alberts, the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Science, served for 12 years as the head of the U.S. National Academy for Science, an

Just like Google’s Street View feature, which followed a Canadian launch after being tested in the American market, Google introduced this month traffic levels for major Canadian cities after almost three years of use in the U.S. In the past week the service was extended from mobile devices to web browsing as well.

Toronto.com has offered much more limited traffic features for several years, but nothing even close to the level of detail or interactivity provided by Google.

Late this summer Google had expanded the service to include arterial roads, which was a major complaint among American users. They also . . . [more]