Just when you thought that the whole craziness of IP couldn’t get any more strange… along comes VueStar Technologies, a Singaporean company that claims a patent on using images to link to a webpage. It seems the company does have Singapore Patent No. 95940 and on that basis is sending bills to firms in Singapore for an annual license of their patent. According to the story in ZDNet Asia, the VueStar has also received a patent in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. A very quick search for VueStar in the Canadian patent database didn’t get a hit. . . . [more]

A 2007 discussion paper mooting a proposed “plurilateral” Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, to bind Canada, the U.S., Japan, and European nations among others, has been making the rounds of various websites lately. Leaked last week by the interesting WikiLeaks, you can read the document here [PDF].

Quite apart from anything else, the role proposed to be given to border guards seems problematic.

[And while I’m here, why “plurilateral,” a word that hasn’t yet made it to the online OED? What was wrong with “multilateral”?] . . . [more]

Any of our readers who are not also regular readers of www.thecourt.ca, Osgoode Hall Law School’s blog about the Supreme Court of Canada, should take a moment to visit this morning.

The editors of The Court have posted an interview with Louise Meagher, the Supreme Court’s Deputy Registrar, on the Courtroom Modernization Program at the SCC. . . . [more]

Readers may be interested in the decision of the Quebec Court of Appeal in the BCE bondholders case, released late Wednesday. The PDF of the judgment [2.5 MB] is available here on Slaw. It is not yet on CanLII. . . . [more]

The 9-0 SCC judgment is 2008 SCC 28.

By making the product of its interviews of Mr Khadr available to US authorities, Canada participated in a process that was contrary to Canada’s international human rights obligations.

Khadr is entitled to see some of the documents he has requested. . . . [more]

Yesterday, I attended a really stimulating discussion at the Writers’ Union Annual Meeting involving Jill Tonus of Bereskin & Parr and the Director of the Scream Literary Festival and York University’s experimental new media lab, Bill Kennedy. The session was moderated by Derek Weiler, the Editor of Quill & Quire.

The issue that Canadian authors confront is how to adapt their work and their expectations to shifting business models for Canadian book and periodical publishing which are continually under threat by shifting market forces, and the new technologies. . . . [more]

Should you have business with the courts in Scotland, you might find their website useful. Although the site has been up for over a year, it seems, we haven’t yet pointed to it on Slaw. There’s a tab for the public and one for the profession with a decent menu in each case. As well, there’s a links page with a list of law-related Scottish resources that might be helpful on occasion. . . . [more]

15 months after its creation by the Quebec government, and after extensive public hearings in all regions of the province on the issue of how far society should go to accommodate requests for religious and cultural adjustments from individuals from minority groups, the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences finally released its report and recommendations.

The 2 commissioners, sociologist Gérard Bouchard and philosopher Charles Taylor, make 37 recommendations.

Among them, they suggest that the government prepare an official White Paper on secularism (“laïcité”), that it promote interculturalism and provide better funding to diversity programs, that it . . . [more]

As reported in Slaw (Oregon Claims Copyright Over Laws and It’s All Gone Ore-gon), the state of Oregon maintains that it holds the copyright over its laws and has moved to prevent their publication by others. Now the state will hold a hearing in June to reconsider the question. . . . [more]

After the provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, it appears that Ontario is interested in having an apology law.

Liberal David Orazietti has sponsored a bill (referred to the provincial legislature’s Standing Committee on Social Policy after 2nd reading) that would allow an individual or organization to apologize for an accident or wrongdoing without it being considered an admission of liability admissible in a civil proceeding.

Here are a few earlier posts about apology laws on the Library Boy blog:

• Apology Acts – Saying ‘Sorry’ Without Incurring Liability (November 19, 2006): “The province of Saskatchewan will amend its Evidence

I stumbled across an interesting story about the intersection of law, ethics and technology. Workers at an internet security company called TippingPoint discovered a way to gain control of a network of computers remotely – and secretly – controlled by spammers (a so-called “botnet”). The botnet is made up of 400,000 computers and used to send out huge volumes of spam.

The researchers are now capable of sending out a signal to the infected computers to remove the virus. However, like the way the program installed itself, it would have to be done without the consent of the computer owner. . . . [more]

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has launched a new website called A Nation’s Chronicle: The Canada Gazette:

“Often referred to as ‘the official newspaper of the Government of Canada,’ the Canada Gazette has been an important instrument in the Canadian democratic process for more than 160 years. It has served to inform Canadians of the operations of government and to involve them actively in the legislative process. With this site, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), in co-operation with the Canada Gazette Directorate, Public Works and Government of Services Canada, will make the Gazette available online, in its entirety, for