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The Speaker’s Rulings website is woefully out of date.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

I decided I needed to educate myself a little when I saw Paul Lomio’s post (April 26, 2010) on Legal Research Plus: “What If Law Journal Citations Included Digital Object Identifiers? A Snapshot of Major Law Journals“. The post referenced an article by Benjamin J. Keele, abstracted (March 18, 2010) on SSRN: “What If Law Journal Citations Included Digital Object Identifiers? A Snapshot of Major Law Journals“.

The abstract began in a way which made me skeptical:

Prevailing citation practice in law journals is to use uniform resource locators (URLs) when citing electronic sources. Digital object

Today, April 26, 2010, is World Intellectual Property Day. It is the 10th anniversary of this celebration initiated by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (“WIPO”). This year’s theme is: Innovation – Linking the World. . . . [more]

The decision in Vinod Chopra Films Private Limited et al. v. John Doe 2010 FC 387 by Hughes, J. concerns a review of a “rolling” Anton Piller order granted by the Federal Court of Canada in a copyright infringement case to an Indian film production company and its Canadian licensee against various un-named persons who (according to the claim) “deal in counterfeit video recordings.”

Pursuant to Justice Zinn’s Order of January 26, 2010, the plaintiffs seized allegedly counterfeit copies of a film entitled “3 Idiots” from a number of defendants who then sought review of the Order.

An Anton Piller . . . [more]

Henry George Bohn said in the 1855 Handbook of Proverbs,

An idle brain is the Devil’s shop.

It’s probably just as applicable today, especially with those recently unemployed in the legal profession.

Henry Russell (supposedly a fake name) is a 37-year-old Los Angeles attorney who has just released a new book, Craigslist Casual Encounters: The Hilarious and Disturbing World of Seeking Sex Online. A year after losing his job he decided it was a good idea to start posting fake advertisements on CraigsList, starting with dryer lint and quickly escalating to ads seeking sex.

Often impersonating . . . [more]

I’m pleased to be able to tell you that this coming week we have a firm guest blogger joining us. Bereskin & Parr is a leading Canadian IP firm with offices in Toronto, Montréal, Mississauga, and the Waterloo Region. They’ve provided us with the following description:

Founded in 1965, Bereskin & Parr LLP serves clients in over 100 countries worldwide. With more than 260 people, including more than 70 lawyers, patent and trade mark agents, Bereskin & Parr and its award-winning professionals are consistently rated in Canada as the benchmark for intellectual property law.

The firm has dedicated practice groups

Andrew Weaver, who holds the Canada Research Chair at the University of Victoria’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, launched a defamation action on Monday, naming the National Post and some of its employees and writers as defendants. Dr. Weaver is perhaps Canada’s leading climatologist and has written extensively on global warming. The National Post’s editorial position might be described as that of a warming denier, and the articles of primary concern in the lawsuit were clearly hostile to Dr. Weaver’s position.

I won’t take you through the material here: you can examine the statement of claim for yourself, . . . [more]