When should software and business methods be patentable, if ever? Two courts are currently grappling with this very question. In the United States, the Supreme Court is expected to deliver its decision in Bilski v. Kappos within weeks. In Canada, the Federal Court recently heard oral arguments in Amazon.com, Inc. v. The Attorney General of Canada et al, the Amazon 1-Click appeal. Both cases are likely to shape the patent landscape for years to come.

Previous developments

Previous decisions in Bilski and Amazon both conspicuously broke with established patentability requirements and led to the current appeals. Each discarded earlier . . . [more]

Following on the heels of Ontario’s draconian Road Safety Act (discussed at some length in one of my earlier Slaw posts) The B.C. Liberal government has introduced legislation that would create a Provincial offence for driving with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) between 0.05-0.08 (the Criminal Code legal limit is 0.08). The penalty for a first offender would be a 3-day driving ban plus a $200 fine rising from there for each subsequent offence.

Not to be outdone by Ontario though, B.C.’s law proposes to go a step further by also creating a Provincial offence of driving over 0.08. . . . [more]

The venerable Journal of Information, Law & Technology (JILT) is reborn as the European Journal of Law and Technology. Volume 1, Number 1, available free online, is a special issue, “A History of Legal Informatics”:

• Let there Be Lite: A Brief History of Legal Information Retrieval (Jon Bing)
• The Global Development of Free Access To Legal Information (Graham Greenleaf)
• How Structural Features of the U.S. Judicial System Have Affected the Take-Up of Digital Technology by Courts (Peter W Martin)
• Legal Informatics – A Personal Appraisal of Context and Progress (Richard Susskind)
• Jurimetrics Please! (Richard De Mulder)
• The Rise

Connie Crosby and I will be co-presenting with two American law library colleagues (Jane Edwards and Marlene Coir) in a few weeks at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries in Windsor, this year a joint conference with the Michigan Association of Law Libraries.

Our topic is “Legal Research Free and Fast!” and we will be making available a jointly-authored paper that provides an overview and analysis of “free” versus “fee” online research tools.

My personal challenge for the presentation – and I assume perhaps a challenge shared by my co-panelists – is what free Internet-based, law-related . . . [more]

The Canadian Privacy Commissioner is in the midst of consultations on the privacy impacts of online tracking, profiling and targeting. The first public event is a panel discussion taking place today correction – Thursday the 29th in Toronto from 8:30 til 4:15. This event is being webcast. Viewers are invited to pose questions to the panelists.

To follow the consultations on twitter the hashtag is #priv2010. The Privacy Commisioner’s office’s twitter handle is @privacyprivee. . . . [more]

In Canada, under s. 48(1) of the Patent Act, a patentee can disclaim portions of an issued patent if “by mistake, accident or inadvertence, and without any willful intent to defraud or mislead the public,” the patentee has “made a specification too broad, claiming more than that of which the patentee… was the inventor.” Disclaimers can be filed to correct errors in patents and can be used to enhance the validity of existing claims by narrowing the claims based on newly discovered prior art. However, patentees should proceed with caution, as disclaimers filed in the wrong manner, or for . . . [more]

♬ And I hear this calling
Still you don’t seem so far at all …♬

Lyrics, music and recorded by All That Remains…

On Friday, May 14, 2010 (9:00 AM – 4:30 PM) the 5th Annual Solo and Small Firm Conference and Expo will be hosted by The Law Society of Upper Canada in conjunction with The Ontario Bar Association.

What makes this Solo and Small Firm Conference a bit unique and new this year (and important in a Province that is bigger than France and Spain combined) is the live webcast of the Conference:

If you are unable

As anyone who follows tech will know, a prototype of Apple’s secret (as it then was) next model iPhone escaped into the wild, thanks to a careless employee. It made its way from the finder to the tech blogging site Gizmodo. There the thing of beauty was disassembled and the entrails reported to the public by Jason Chen. Subsequently, California police executed a search warrant and removed material from Mr. Chen’s residence. As I understand it, no criminal charges have been laid against Mr. Chen at this point.

Most of the discussion has debated the legality of the search warrant, . . . [more]

in today’s historic announcement on parliamentary privilege can be found here.

The Speaker’s Rulings website is woefully out of date.

Here are links to coverage by the Globe and CBC. . . . [more]

When I was first appointed to the High Court of Justice of Ontario in March, 1988, the era of having a dedicated court reporter assigned to a judge and traveling with that judge throughout Ontario was coming to an end. In 1988, most court reporters created a court record of the viva voce evidence by way of shorthand. If the presiding judge required a portion of the evidence transcribed, the court reporter would create a transcript after court hours from his/her shorthand notes. This system started to disappear in the late 1980’s as a result of the expense involved in . . . [more]

  and by Jill Jarvis-TonusJill Jarvis-Tonus, B.F.A. (Dramatic Arts), LL.B., leads the New Media/Copyright Practice group for Bereskin & Parr LLP. In recent years, Jill has increasingly worked on copyright and trade mark matters relating to new media products and Internet services, including the drafting of website agreements and other Internet related contracts, the selection and protection of domain names, advising on the infringement of copyrights and trade marks on the internet and privacy law concerns.
[click on the author’s name to go to email and web page links]

Twitter has become a cultural phenomenon, 140 characters at a . . . [more]

This week in biotech, everyone was trying to find a way through.

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society is trying to find a way through to new treatments, and has created a whole funding program to do so. This week they pumped $3.2 million into a clinical program at Avila Therapeutics; and three other companies last year were able to start clinical trials with LLS funding. These biotech-foundation collaborations are win-win arrangements that you can expect to see more of.

Canadian Flax growers are trying to find a way through to use Roundup-resistant varieties without alienating the European Union (their . . . [more]