Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on technology, research and practice.

Technology

Dan Pinnington

[No technology tip this week.]

Research

Acts Can Be Amended by Regulations
Shaunna Mireau

Oh legislation. How I love the odd and interesting and esoteric nature of delving into your secrets! Today’s Tip is a reminder that legislation passed by elected members can be amended by others if they are given the authority to do so. I have an example from Alberta . . .

Practice

Take . . . [more]

A recent decision of the Federal Court in Novartis v Teva 2013 FC 283 (“Novartis”) [under appeal A-123-13] has established that the relevant date for patent sufficiency is not until the publication date. Novartis may highlight an inconsistency in validity analysis. In some ways the notional “person skilled in the art” (who by definition is not inventive) is expected to know more, and earlier, than the inventors themselves (who are obviously inventive).

Narrowing of claims to one compound renders patent sufficient

In Novartis, Mr. Justice Hughes held that Novartis’ compound patent (CA 1,338,937[i]) was sufficient . . . [more]

As law firms tackle the new reality of the economy and the changes being demanded by corporate clients, they should look to those within the firms who are already well-versed in strategy for business change: librarians.

I am currently in Seattle at the American Association of Law Libraries annual conference, including the Private Law Libraries’ Summit on Saturday. The message we are hearing from a number of different perspectives is clear: lawyers would be advised to seek help in re-developing their firms so they are better positioned for competitive advantage, and librarians are well suited for the C suite, . . . [more]

Slaw has recently featured two great pieces from Simon Fodden and David Canton discussing PRISM and its privacy ramifications. Concerns over PRISM and what are sure to be other as-of-yet undisclosed government surveillance programs has left many wondering how they can “lock down” their data in the cloud.

While PRISM caused much gnashing of teeth about the security of the cloud in general, there are nine providers that provide data to the government under PRISM, as detailed by an NSA presentation released by the Washington Post:

• Microsoft
• Google
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Skype
• Twitter
• AOL
• Apple
• YouTube

The web searches we . . . [more]

Some time ago it was reported that a Spanish court had ordered Google to delete records of people’s private information on the ground that the applicable privacy laws gave them a ‘right to be forgotten’.

The Advocate General of the European Court of Justice published an opinion on this topic last month. In short, he opined that the EU Privacy Directive did not include a right to be forgotten, and that search engines did not control personal information in any event so were not subject to rules about handling personal information as ‘controllers’ under the Directive (or the national laws . . . [more]

Are you in need of a mentor? Would you mentor someone if you had the time? Here is a possible solution for both. The OBA’s Working Group on Lawyers and Real Estate has undertaken a mentoring initiative on their web site, www.lawyersworkinggroup.com. This mentoring initiative is set up so that everyone can participate with little effort. Go to the site, see the question of the month, click on the suggested answers provided or add a comment and you’re done.

The Working Group encourages all Ontario real estate lawyers to visit the web site regularly or sign up for the . . . [more]

Just in time for the summer silly season come a flurry of reports about successful new messaging systems in Asia and their “stickers.” (See, e.g., the WSJ story.) Prime among the systems is Line, which has developed a very large body of users in Japan and other Asian countries in a relatively short time, in part — if not principally — because of its use of “stickers.”

Stickers are rather more elaborate emoticons, small cartoons, in effect; Line has developed a cast of characters with “personalties,” further encoding, if you will, a kind of meaning within each graphic. . . . [more]

What does one do about malware, about intrusion into one’s IT systems, about cyber-attacks? My last column looked at the criminal law aspects of ‘hacking back’ – is ‘active defence’ legal? Here we turn to other considerations. What are the civil rights and wrongs? In these days of state-sponsored attacks, are there military aspects? For that matter, what are the practicalities of attacking the attackers? 

Civil rights and wrongs

The legal questions about civil liability for intruding on someone else’s computer system work in both directions, i.e. the cyber-attacker may in principle be exposed to the same civil liability as . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada's award-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from forty-one recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible.

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Wise Law Blog  2. First Reference Talks  3. Slater Vecchio Connected  4. University of Alberta Faculty of Law Blog  5. ABlawg

On the second Sunday in each month we bring you a summary from Supreme Advocacy LLP of recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers a weekly electronic newsletter, SupremeAdvocacyLett@r, to which you may subscribe.

Summary of all appeals and leaves to appeal granted (so you know what the S.C.C. will soon be dealing with). For leaves, both the date the S.C.C. granted leave and the date of the C.A. judgment below are added in, in case you want to track and check out the C.A. judgment. (June 13 to July 11, 2013 inclusive).

APPEALS . . . [more]

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The recent decision of Justice Fuerst in R v. Lippa has the controversy over the standing of paralegals raging again in Ontario. The decision relates to whether judicial officers have the discretion over which legal professionals will sit in the courtroom, and the order of cases which will be called.

In deciding that paralegals can be treated differently within the court system, Justice Fuerst made some interesting comments. She states at para. 18,

…s. 29 of the Law Society Act provides that every person who is licensed to practise law in Ontario as a barrister and solicitor is an

. . . [more]

Look at any list of current SEO strategies and it will be immediately clear that the #1 tactic relates to content. In my last column on law firm SEO tactics to avoid in 2013, I concluded that more than anything else, we need to ensure a “regular flow of original content (and deep links flowing into that content)” and to “make good choices: on publishing, building audiences, coding, classification, proper description, and most important, connecting with people.”

I stand by those words. The bottom line is that content drives search traffic; this has never been truer than in 2013. . . . [more]