Photo by Furkan Salihoğlu at Pexels By Murray Gottheil | March 22, 2025 Paul is a junior lawyer. His supervising lawyer expects every document that Paul creates to be perfect. To ensure this, the supervisor reviews and often revises all of Paul’s draft documents, no matter how routine they may be. Paul resents the extra time […]
By Marcel Strigberger | March 17, 2026 Pets. Are the courts in a divorce action where both parties seek custody to treat them like children or property? The law in this area is all over the zoo. An Alberta judge, Douglas Mah, recently held in a case dealing with four cats that pets are to be treated […]
“Canada has a rather strict system compared to other jurisdictions […], Nonetheless, it is still quite navigable in practice with the guidance of an experienced practitioner.” – Herman Cheung By Julius Melnitzer | March 16, 2026 Canada’s double patenting (DP) regime, which recognizes both “same invention” DP and “obviousness-type double patenting” (OTDP), but has no provision […]
“Except for Quebec, a civil law jurisdiction, Canada has very few statutory provisions covering personality rights specifically.” — Daniel Anthony Like New Zealand, Canada’s federal government and common law provinces do not recognize the general, US style “right of publicity” that protects personality rights—the right to control one’s name, image, likeness—as a property right. “Except for Quebec, […]
RECORD FINE FOR AI MISUSE IS NO DETERRENT TO LAWYERS In what is said to be the highest fine imposed so far in Canada on lawyers who misuse AI, the Alberta Court of Appeal has imposed personal costs of $17,500 + GST on an Alberta lawyer who filed a factum drafted by a contractor that […]
“AI increases the risk of misuse of personal information, both in terms of the information that businesses are feeding into, and receiving from, AI platforms.” — Thomas Huthwaite By Julius Melnitzer | March 5, 2026 With the advent of artificially-generated images and viral content, the growing ubiquity of deepfakes and dupes has become a growing concern, […]
“Copyright protects reproductions, so from a legal perspective, the way you assess memorisation is by looking at the output.” – Vincent Bergeron By Julius Melnitzer | March 4, 2026 The immediate and growing controversy over whether artificial intelligence (AI) “learns” or “memorises” is raising a foundational challenge to copyright law. What’s ignited the controversy are recent […]
By Julius Melnitzer | March 3, 2026 The British Columbia Supreme Court has ruled employers don’t necessarily have an unfettered right to dictate the terms of a repurchase of shares held by former employees under a stock option plan. “The message is that even when discretion is granted under the terms of a plan, that […]
“New Zealand’s current regime is more closely allied with other countries, including Australia, than it was before.” – Sam Ting By Julius Melnitzer | February 3, 2026 New Zealand and Australia both allow divisional applications. Although both prohibit double patenting, their laws and rules are not the same, and recent developments in New Zealand have narrowed […]
In China, there is no doctrine preventing an applicant from obtaining multiple patents for obvious variants, patentably indistinct subject matter, or incremental improvements, so long as the claims are not identical in scope – Michael Huang Double patenting doctrine worldwide builds on the principle that an inventor is entitled to only one patent for each invention. […]