Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

1. Orphan Well Association v Grant Thornton Limited, 2017 ABCA 124

[12] When oil and gas wells are producing, they are very valuable assets. However, when they cease to be productive they quickly turn into significant liabilities. For public safety and environmental reasons, the Alberta Energy Regulator has specific “end-of-life” rules on how a spent well must be rendered environmentally safe by . . . [more]

The Patented Medicines Prices Review Board (“Board”) recently concluded a 7 year saga regarding its evaluation of the price for Soliris – Alexion’s admittedly breakthrough drug for rare blood disorders. This is the first Board decision dealing with an orphan drug. The Decision aptly illustrates that using the traditional statutory/regulatory framework for patented medicines pricing to evaluate Soliris (which has gained notoriety as the world’s most expensive drug) may be like fitting a square peg into a round hole. The Soliris story provides a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the quasi-judicial price regulating body. Notable highlights include: the . . . [more]

You may recall that the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) has recently adopted a Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records. An overview report made at the time is here. The text of the Model Law, along with a Guide to its Enactment, are here. Some previous attention to this project has been paid on Slaw here (2011), here (2012) and here (2016).

Transferable records

Transferable records are those that carry property rights with them, so one can transfer the property by transferring the document. Examples include negotiable instruments such as warehouse receipts, bills of lading . . . [more]

The publishers in the legal industry often get a bad rap, either for their lack or insufficient level of innovation, the cost of the services they provide, or the reluctance to transition entirely to digital.

We gave the publishers an opportunity to weigh in on these issues at the Ontario Bar Association’s TECHxpo 2017, where Colin Lachance, CEO of Compass (formerly Maritime LawBook), Eric Wai, a Managing Director at LexisNexis Canada Inc., and Fred Glady, Vice President of Customer Segments at Thomson Reuters, joined us.

The first myth we dispelled was that print was dead in the legal industry. . . . [more]

Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

PÉNAL (DROIT) : Reconnu coupable notamment d’agressions sexuelles, l’accusé échoue à démontrer que le juge de première instance a erré en droit en déclarant admissible en preuve le témoignage de l’une des plaignantes rendu à l’enquête préliminaire au lieu de son témoignage au procès.

Intitulé : Lafrance c. R., 2017 . . . [more]

The current series of legal kerfuffles in scholarly publishing involves property and access rights in an industry that is, for all intents and purposes, moving toward universal open access. Let’s begin with recent moves by Elsevier, the largest of scholarly publishing corporations with over 2,000 journals, and the American Chemical Society, among the richest of the non-profit societies. These two entities have recently been awarded damages of $15 million (June 2017) and $4.8 million (September 2017) respectively by the U.S. courts, in light of Sci-Hub database, (which I have addressed earlier) providing free access to the better part of . . . [more]

The British Columbia Law Institute (BCLI) recently published a Study Paper on Financing Litigation that looks at six financing models that have emerged both in Canada and internationally that can help litigants pay for litigation:

• Unbundled legal services
• Third-party litigation funding
• Alternative fee arrangements
• Crowdfunding
• Legal expense insurance
• Publicly funded litigation funds

The Institute has started a 6-part blog series on the topic. Each blog post will showcase one of the financing models.

Two posts have appeared so far.

The first post is on Unbundled Legal Services. The second is on Third-Party Litigation Funding.

It is all part . . . [more]

On November 1, 2017, the Ontario government tabled Bill 174, Cannabis, Smoke-Free Ontario and Road Safety Statute Law Amendment Act, 2017, which would, if enacted, create the Cannabis Act, 2017 to provide the provincial framework for the upcoming federal Bill C-45, Cannabis Act that will legalize cannabis in Canada in July 1, 2018. . . . [more]

One of the most difficult concepts to define in patent law is the inventiveness or obviousness of an invention. To be valid, a patent must have claims directed to an invention that is non-obvious – i.e. is inventive.

Determining whether an invention obvious, at what point in time, to whom, and with what level of effort, all raise complicated evidentiary and legal issues that often have to be analyzed as part of patentability and validity opinions or at trial.

In 2008, the Supreme Court directly addressed the obviousness analysis by describing a four part analysis (Apotex Inc. v. Sanofi-Synthelabo . . . [more]

On Tuesday November 7, 2017, the first legal challenge to the Quebec law (Bill 62) on the religious neutrality of the state was filed in Superior Court. . . . [more]

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

1. Ktunaxa Nation v. British Columbia (Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations), 2017 SCC 54

[1] The issue in this case is whether the British Columbia Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations (“Minister”) erred in approving a ski resort development, despite claims by the Ktunaxa that the development would breach their constitutional right to freedom of religion and to protection . . . [more]