Siskinds LLP launched the first individual civil suit last Friday against Baer for its birth-control products Yasmin and Yaz. From the CBC:

Yasmin, which is made by Bayer Inc., is one of Canada’s top-selling birth control pills. It is a so-called “fourth generation” hormonal contraceptive and is considered “low dose.”

The announcement of the suit, launched Friday in London, Ont., comes ahead of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s public hearings on the oral contraceptive scheduled for Dec. 8 in Maryland.

The FDA’s reproductive health and drug safety committee will be looking at the safety of Yasmin and its

. . . [more]

Every so often there’s nothing for it but to resort to words. I know these are our stock in trade and as such can overstay their welcome. It’s for that reason that the Friday Fillip usually paints you pretty pictures or invites you into some silly but entertaining time-waster of a game—the equivalent of the “Ohne Wörte” [without words] caption that gets put at the bottom of cartoons in Germany that, well, have no words (apparently so that you don’t blow your entire day hunting for the explanatory text). But, as you’ll likely have guessed, I’m veering into the word . . . [more]

This is a post in a series now appearing regularly on Fridays, setting out some articles, videos, podcasts and the like that contributors at Slaw are enjoying and that you might find interesting. The articles tend to be longer than blog posts and shorter than books, just right for that stolen half hour on the weekend. It’s also likely that most of them won’t be about law — just right for etc.

Please let us have your recommendations for what we and our readers might like.

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This is my first column for Slaw, and may I say, it is an honour to be asked to contribute. Of all the reading material that crosses my desk and my computer, Slaw is one of the few for which I have always made time, even if it’s just to scan titles. The combination of blogs and columns always seems to bring me information, just when I need it, or even better, before I know I need it.

By way of introduction, for many years I worked as a Law Librarian in Bay Street law firms. I even spent a . . . [more]

The Law Society of Upper Canada, pursuant to the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 ("AODA") has released their Guide to Developing a Customer Service Accessibility Policy. This guide is to assist law firms in Ontario in developing the resources to comply with the Customer Service Standards [The Accessibility Standards for Customer Service Regulation (the Customer Service Standards) was adopted in 2007 under the AODA, and are effective on January 1, 2012 for providers of goods and services.] The goal is to make Ontario accessible by 2025 for everyone, including persons with disabilities.

Site news for those who read Slaw only via RSS or email

1. Comment Watch:

In the last week there were 39 comments. You might be particularly interested in these:

• the continuing discussion of Gabriel Granatsein’s post Mandatory Union Awareness Training at Apple
• the informative comment by Carrie Liddy on guest blogger Philippa Lawson’s informative post on Bill C-12 and “Lawful Authority” Under PIPEDA
• the thoughtful comments on Nelson & Simek’s post Ruminations on the Ethics of Law Firm Information Security

You can subscribe to the comments on Slaw either as a separate matter (RSS, email) or . . . [more]

The European Court of Justice issued its breathlessly awaited (at least by some) decision in SABAM v. Scarlet today, striking a serious blow to those imposing intense international pressure with the objective of securing exceptional enforcement for intellectual property rights online. These efforts aim to leverage Internet intermediaries such as ISPs, hosting sites, domain name registrars and even individual blogging sites in order to stomp out any infringing activity occurring on the platforms they operate.

As these intermediaries process and host vast amounts of online conduct, they are uniquely placed to impose unprecedented levels of monitoring and control onto users . . . [more]

Differential treatment of individuals who are actually or presumed to belong to a particular group of people receiving a certain source of income is contrary to human rights standards. A measure that appears neutral can have a discriminatory effect upon a person or group of people, for example, where the measure imposes penalties or restrictive conditions not imposed on others because of their social status. This is exactly the case with...

As the world’s economy heads inexorably for another meltdown it’s instructive to see where the management teams of the larger legal publishers are looking in order to try and keep shareholders and boards happy in the final quarter of 2011.

Two immediate examples come to mind and make us wonder where they can go next.

Option 1 : New International Markets

Now the press releases about China have died down as the publishers (like the rest of us) have realized it’s actually much harder to make money in the PRC than initially thought. Especially so when you have to spend . . . [more]

If you have ten minutes to spare head on over to Google’s British Page, where you’ll find (to quote The Guardian)

A spiky-haired, bespectacled animation of the Polish science fiction author Stanislaw Lem, as the search engine marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of his first book, The Astronauts.

. . . [more]

The trend to more invasive surveillance and control by North American governments (indeed, by many countries that we consider civilized democracies), or their granting of too much control to others is disturbing. Too many things are making creeping (and sometimes creepy) inroads into privacy rights, along with the usual specious “if you’ve got nothing to hide… ” argument. Too many things are tending towards shoot first, ask questions later. And governments are too eager to look to ISP’s and others who run the internet pipes to control what flows through.

Some examples:

The proposed US SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) . . . [more]

In the not too distant past law librarians were valued for their knowledge of “legal bibliography”. Great librarians who built the collections of law schools libraries across Canada were experts in knowing what had been published across jurisdictions and legal topics. With the explosion of print and online legal publishing a knowledge of bibliography gave way to the need to know and understanding how to find relevant information when needed.

Still, the art of knowing the literature on a topic and organising and making that literature available to users both expert and novice is still an important (if perhaps somewhat . . . [more]