Photo by Arindam at Pexels By Murray Gottheil | April 8, 2026 A brave articling student once quipped that, “If you say ‘pro bono’ near Murray, you’d better be talking about Sonny and Cher”. Now that was a tad unfair. It was not that I was against our firm doing pro bono work, but I did […]
By Julius Melnitzer | April 7, 2026 AI prompts may seem like new territory for the law, but in the end the very old principles that define originality work just fine — Vincent Bergeron For all the growing ubiquity of artificial intelligence in our society, its relationship to the law is still nascent. Although AI is […]
By: Julius Melnitzer | April 2, 2026 The Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development has introduced new guidelines for determining whether a remote employee’s home office amounts to a permanent establishment that attracts tax for a foreign employer. The guidelines formulate a two-part test for use in determining whether a permanent establishment exists. The tests consist […]
By Julius Melnitzer | April 1, 2026 What stands out about agentic technology is the extent to which it has allowed penetration of a system that has so frequently seemed impenetrable. — David Hughes It’s no surprise, perhaps, that the advent of AI-driven agentic prior art searches marks a turning point in patent law practice. How, […]
“Breeders who make decisions without the benefit of patent attorneys’ advice risk not having the strongest protection for their rights and risk losing competitive advantages.” — Dr James-Robert Cram Plant breeding sits at the intersection of science, agriculture, and global trade – an intersection where intellectual property settings can either enable innovation or quietly undermine it […]
By Marcel Strigberger | March 24, 2026 Penalty: Jeremy Robert Weldon, 75 hours of community service for farting. I suppose some elaboration is in order. This is part of the sentence imposed by a provincial court judge in Moncton, N.B. on the gentleman who decided to lead the Mounties on a bit of a chase after driving […]
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, […]