Apple fans will already know that Apple has scheduled an event for next Wednesday. While Apple did not specifically mention the iPhone 5, it is rather obvious from the invitation.

Rumour has it that the iPhone 5 will be available September 21.

This comes on the heels of the jury decision in the US that awarded Apple a billion (yes, that’s a “b”) dollars in damages against Samsung for violating Apple patents. No word yet on whether it will be appealed, but given the amount of the damage award, and what the decision could mean for the future of Android . . . [more]

If you’ve been paying any attention at all to the zeitgeist of legal web marketing the last couple years, you know that producing and publishing content is the best possible way to grow your online reputation. But “content, content, content” is so much easier said than done. Firms need specific strategies for building an internal publishing culture. Here, I’ve assembled a list of ten tips to do this.

1. Think inside the firm, but make it smaller

If your firm is bigger than say, a dozen people, the idea of coordinating publishing across the board is pretty daunting and not . . . [more]

It’s odd, if you think about it, that with the advance of industrial capitalism we’re now born having to pay rent. There’s no place on the planet where you may be simply because you are. At least, I think it’s odd. And so does Tracy Heffernan, it would seem. She’s the program director at the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario and the recent recipient of a Community Leadership in Justice Fellowship from the Ontario Law Foundation.

According to the Law Foundation press release, her project:

will study the ways in which the Charter has already been used to advance

The names of two lawyers are included in this years list of individuals being recognized as Leaders to be Proud Of and champions of diversity by Out on Bay Street.

Douglas Elliott, a Partner at Roy, Elliott and OConnor, is to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award for having demonstrated exceptional leadership throughout his professional career in advancing the rights of the LGBTQA community.

Kate Broer, a Partner at Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP, is to receive the Leading Executive Ally Award for making a significant contribution to advancing LGBTQA issues through advocacy and outreach as an active and . . . [more]

The 10^th anniversary of the entry into force of treaty that set up the International Criminal Court (ICC) is a good moment to look back and ahead. There are now 15 cases from 7 situations before the court. Three are so-called self-referrals – Uganda, DRC, and the Central African Republic – and two cases came via the Security Council: Darfur and Libya. The Prosecutor, with leave from the judges, used his own powers to examine the situation in Kenya and Cote d’Ivoire. These are great achievements for an institution that is only 10 years old. There is also criticism. . . . [more]

Here are the four (bonus!) most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the month of August.

♨ 1. D’Amico v. Hitti 2012 ONSC 4467 [See also Matt Mauer’s recent post on Slaw about this case.]

[1] My recent experience sitting as a single judge of this Court to hear motions has convinced me that there is a growing practice by unscrupulous residential tenants to manipulate the law improperly, and often dishonestly, to enable them to remain in their rented premises for long periods of time without having to pay rent to their landlords. It is practice that imposes an unfair hardship

Back in July I promised to post about the results of my Summer Writing List project. I determined that there has long been a need, based on reference questions, for an annotation to the Alberta Insurance Act. Proving that all things happen when they are meant to, a recent major revamp of Part 5 of our act dealing with Insurance Contracts was finally proclaimed in force as of July 2, 2012. I say finally because these amendments were published as S.A. 2008, c.19. This post is the story of the process of creating an Annotated Alberta Insurance Act.

First, I . . . [more]

A decision last year of the Federal Court of Appeal stated a clear rule about the relationship between the patent office and patent agents: once a patent issues, most aspects of the patent application process are beyond challenge (Weatherford Canada Ltd. v. Corlac Inc., 2011 FCA 228):

[150] To be clear, the concept of abandonment in paragraph 73(1)(a) operates during the prosecution of the application for a patent. Its operation is extinguished once the patent issues.

As a result of the decision, parties challenging the validity of an issued Canadian patent may no longer point to . . . [more]

In today’s Huffington Post Canada, Mitch Joel poses the question “Is Podcasting Poised for a Comeback?”

Podcasts, you may or may not know, are like internet-based audio or video shows, created in a series, syndicated via the internet often through iTunes, and portable i.e. viewable on computer or mobile devices such as iPods, tablets or smartphones.

Mitch points specifically to five podcasts that could help the medium make a resurgence:

• Foundation with Kevin Rose. 
• Here’s The Thing with Alec Baldwin. 
• Nerdist Podcast with Chris Hardwick.
• Pursuit of Spark with Julie Burstein.
• WTF with Marc

The resistance by lawyers over the adoption of cloud computing is a particular grievance for technology evangelists. Not that concerns over confidentiality and security are unwarranted, it’s just that most they often just stem from fear of the unknown.

For those lawyers who still believe the most secure place to store their client information is in their heads, there’s an inexpensive technological device being developed through the University of California and the University of Oxford in Geneva which allows users to hack directly into someone’s brain.

Of course lawyers are far more ready to embrace emerging technology when the risk . . . [more]

Here’s a fascinating description of the 50,000 foot view of “big data,” and its potentials. MIT professor Alex Pentland is one of the most prominent experts in the field, and in this interview he outlines what big data is: evidence of our behaviour (bank transactions and location logs), as opposed to records of our consciousness (as in facebook content). Deeply embedded in social realities and institutions, our behaviour reveals a lot about what works and what doesn’t.

Thus, big data invites, and even requires (by virtue of its granularity) new approaches to the construction, maintenance, and revision of markets, transportation, . . . [more]

Working in Academia, the day after Labour Day always feels far more like New Year’s Day to me than Jan 1. That being the case the Friday before Labour Day weekend is like New Year’s Eve and my tradition for academic New Year’s Eve is to take a look at the incoming class of law students to see what their mindset is and try to figure out how to relate to them (I dropped my Dragnet reference with regards to legal writing
“just the facts” years ago, which was a shame because I really liked that one). One of the . . . [more]