Congratulation to Slaw’s own Dominic Jaar, who has just been named CEO of the Canadian Centre for Court Technology. From the press release:

The mandate for the CCCT is:

1) Bringing the justice sector stakeholders together, including deputy ministers, lawyers, senior court administrators, judges and representatives of the public, to create an atmosphere favourable to technological innovation and excellence in our court systems to enhance access to justice.
2) Supporting the effective transfer and sharing of information between courts and other elements of the justice system.
3) Providing the tools and activities needed to exchange information and

Looks like CLB Media is pulling the plug on their Canadian Lawyer Associates magazine. This from an email I received yesterday:

“The Spring edition of Canadian Lawyer Associates magazine, now in circulation and available digitally at www.canadianlawyermag.com/associates, will be the last printed version of the publication. Market conditions have prevented this very well-received publication from gaining the advertising traction it needed to sustain its publishing schedule.

We wish to thank all those in the legal community who supported the publication through advertising and by supplying story ideas and editorial content which allowed us to publish and distribute five excellent issues

ABA TECHSHOW 2009 is quickly approaching – April 2-4 in Chicago – and as the earlybird registration was just extended to March 6, you have a few more days to save up to $400 on registration fees.

After several years on the organizing committee, and as Chair of ABA TECHSHOW 2007, it could easily be claimed that I am a tad biased about this conference. I won’t deny that – but I think this conference speaks for itself.

ABA TECHSHOW, now in its 23rd year, is the world’s premier legal technology CLE conference and expo. The conference offers more than . . . [more]

The Bank of Canada has just announced it has dropped its target for the overnight rate by 50 basis points to 0.5%. You may recall back in December that we started on this descent into unprecedented lows known as the “race to zero”. The goal is to help the Canadian economy recover from the current recession. According to Bank of Canada’s news release: . . . [more]

The vogue for several years in the major commercial legal publishing houses has been to offer data through “global platforms” that give the customer a single point of access to all of their proprietary and licensed content. A global platform enables the publisher to “leverage” its proprietary content from one country by selling it in another. In addition to expanding the scope of the product offering, a global platform offers an opportunity for online revenue growth by transactional and subscription sales of international content in the various domestic markets.

It all sounds like a great idea, especially in the boardrooms . . . [more]

The ITU today released a major survey on global access to information, comparing developments in information and communication technologies.

A lot of food for thought.

Based on ITU estimates, 23 out of 100 inhabitants globally used the Internet at the end of 2008. But penetration levels in the developing countries remain low. Africa with 5 per cent penetration is lagging behind.

The global trend shows significant growth in mobiles: Six in 10 people across the globe now use mobile phones, particularly in developing countries. By the end of 2008, there were an estimated 4.1 billion subscribers globally. In . . . [more]

While I suspect that most Slaw readers have Google as their home page or their default search engine, young lawyers need to be reminded that every search engine has its limits, and that different engines will generate different results. The page you really need may be invisible.

While over the years I’ve migrated engines – anyone remember hotbot or Northernlight ? – my current alternate tends to be Microsoft’s live.com. It’s a trailing third behind Google and Yahoo.

News today of major changes:

a Best Match feature resulting from a souped-up algorithm

– for more analysis see an excellent . . . [more]

Dean of Osgoode Hall Law School, Patrick Monahan, has accepted the invitation of the President of York University to become York’s new Vice-President Academic and Provost. President Shoukri has indicated that the search for a new dean for the law school will be thorough and will take some time. Osgoode Professor Jinyan Li has agreed to become interim dean, during the search process. . . . [more]

Yesterday’s New York Times article Copyright Challenge for Sites that Excerpt by Brian Stelter explores the boundaries as to what is acceptable with regard to excerpting from news stories by other websites, and what is causing news publishers to become uncomfortable. When is it acceptable to quote the majority of an article in a blog post? Is it okay to take a whole RSS feed from a news source (which they are freely supplying), and republish it on a website with additional advertising?

It seems that it all depends on who is doing the republishing. Prominent free news aggregator Google . . . [more]

Lots of biotech and pharma deal activity is ongoing in Canada and around the world, including Roche’s debt offering to fund its Genentech bid and an unsolicited offer by JLL Partners for Patheon, which was founded in Canada.

New regulations are on the way for organic food in Canada, where cloned animals will be excluded; and for genetic information in the U.S., where the EEOC started hearings to implement Title II of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.

Regulatory optimism from GTC Biotherapeutics, which started a collaboration with New Zealand’s AgResearch for animal-produced biosimilars; but pessimism from . . . [more]

Over two years ago, Simon Chester noted,

75 percent of all traffic on the Internet is due to file sharing, with 59 percent of that file sharing attributed to people swapping video files. Music tracks account for 33 percent of the file-sharing traffic. E-mail, it turns out, accounts for just 9 percent of the total traffic.

Well it turns out that all that file sharing activity is not without risk.

Tiversa, a Pennsylvania-based company that monitors peer-to-peer file sharing, revealed this week that they found a transfer of military information from a defense contractor in Bethesda, Md., to . . . [more]

I’m pleased to report that Jeremy Grushcow has joined Slaw as a regular contributor. Jeremy is a Foreign Legal Consultant (Illinois, New York) practising corporate law at Ogilvy Renault LLP in Toronto. He has a particular focus on life science and technology companies, and brings to bear a doctorate in molecular genetics and cell biology and a law degree from the University of Chicago. Jeremy already blogs at his Cross-Border Biotech Blog, together with Dani Peters and Beni Rovinski, and will provide us with regular updates on developments in his fields of interest.

Please welcome Jeremy Grushcow to Slaw. . . . [more]