FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

OTTAWA, May 13, 2011 – The Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of Canada, announced today that Justice Ian Binnie and Justice Louise Charron have written to the Minister of Justice, the Honourable Robert Nicholson, to inform him that they will retire from the Supreme Court of Canada. Justice Charron’s retirement will be effective August 30, 2011. Justice Binnie’s retirement will take effect upon the same date or, if there is a delay in the nomination process, so soon thereafter as his replacement is appointed. The Judges Act provides that a judge of the Supreme Court of . . . [more]

Lists have power. There’s a sense that we’ve achieved dominion over a thing when we’ve snugged it into place within a list: to order is akin to ordering about.

Sometimes this is naughty, sometimes nice, as that chubby list-maker Santa might say. Joe McCarthy, one of Wisconsin’s most disgraceful sons, waved that notorious piece of paper over his head in the US Senate, saying, “I have here in my hand a list of two hundred and five people that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party…”

But then, to go to the other . . . [more]

LisNews points us to an interesting alert on the vulnerability of ebook reader apps to linkspamming, phishing and, potentially, the full range of malicious exploits.

As the full potential of hypertext for the communication of book-length works is incrementally being explored, I suppose this development is inevitable. . . . [more]

Back in May 2007, Simon Fodden mentioned the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims dealing with the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. Alex Manevich followed soon after with decisions denying the link between vaccines and autism, and an insightful discussion on policy aspects of statutory bars to claims not fully grounded in scientific evidence.

More recently, Michael Lines raised the retraction by The Lancet and findings of unethical behaviour by physicians in the U.K. who claimed a link between vaccines and autism.

But just when you think a debate of this . . . [more]

“How do we know if our website is delivering value?” More law firm partners are asking this question these days, especially when the website commands a noticeable chunk of the IT or marketing budgets (or both). However, unlike many IT projects (usually marked as depreciating capital assets) or marketing efforts (often difficult to link to new business), law firm websites can be measured in a variety of ways, with each metric weighted differently depending on the view of the lawyer or firm involved. Consider some of the following methods:

1. Website traffic. It’s hard to argue with the ongoing count . . . [more]

The Google IO developer conference has just finished up, with one of the major announcements being the new Chrome OS laptops, such as the Samsung Series 5 seen in this Engadget video:

The feature list is intentionally short, but the prices are comparable to the sub-$450 laptop market — a little high, honestly, since the chromebook doesn’t look all that superior to current netbook trend. If you’ve used Google’s Chrome browser with apps, you already know about the user experience. The lack of the ability to install executable files has caused some speculation that the antivirus industry may be impacted . . . [more]

The University of Toronto is hosting a cyber-surveillance event this week that includes the typical academic workshops, as well as an artistic component. The event and the workshop are part The New Transparency: Surveillance and Social Sorting, a research project funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council.

From the press release:

Digitally mediated surveillance is an increasingly prevalent, but still largely invisible, aspect of everyday life. As we work, play and negotiate public spaces, on-line and off, we produce a growing stream of personal digital data of interest to unseen others. CCTV cameras hosted by private and public

With the globalization of world markets, competition is consequently rampant. The emergence of the new global village means that nations around the world are looking for ways to be more competitive and more open to foreign investments. It creates a denationalisation of economic conflicts. Alternative dispute resolution and supranational organizations became the two legal solutions to the new economic needs. Nations began coupling the two and many trade treaties have been signed. The most well-known system is the European Union, which promotes a unified continent. As in Europa, several African countries, most of them being former French colonies, joined forces . . . [more]

I don’t know how many lawyers outside of Quebec know about this cause célèbre in plagiarism. Claude Robinson, a screenwriter and illustrator, has been fighting for the last 16 years against the television production company Cinar and others for plagiarizing his ideas and depriving him of his copyright on the television series Robinson Sucroë. So far this case has cost Robinson $2.4 millions dollars in lawyers’ fees. However, Mr. Robinson’s law firm, Gowlings Lafleur Henderson, has agreed to postpone their honoraries until the end of the legal proceedings.

Robinson Sucroë is an animated Franco-Québécois television series, created by . . . [more]

The High Court of England and Wales recently decided, in Southwark London Borough Council v IBM, [2011] EWHC 549 (TCC), that the provision of a licence of software was not a sale of goods, so the implied warranty of fitness for purposes contained in the Sale of Goods Act did not apply to the contract. (See paragraphs 94 – 98.)

The court went on, in obiter, to find that software could be a ‘good’ within the meaning of the Act, but in this case it was not sold (paragraphs 96 & 97). Providing the software on a . . . [more]

by Ryan Mattinson*

To begin, we need to briefly clarify some geek speak. ‘War-driving’ is the act of driving around with a laptop, antenna and often a GPS transceiver, in order to search for and record information about Wi-Fi access points such as SSID (name), BSSID (MAC address), signal strength, etc. and associating this information with GPS coordinates. War-driving requires only the passive collection of information contained in Wi-Fi beacons. These are signals transmitted at regular, frequent intervals by both secure and open access points, even when configured to hide their network name. This is necessary to . . . [more]

Law firm technology is experiencing pressure brought about by the success of consumer-oriented products. As the wave of iPad-toting lawyers begins to wash into the larger law firms, we’re seeing the logical result of the first law students arriving with their personal laptops at schools at the turn of the century. Some law schools initially identified a specific hardware for the students to purchase but that eventually gave way to the creation of systems that could be adapted to whatever technology the students presented.

Now law firms are beginning to adapt to these same consumerization challenges. They are not new . . . [more]