What are the legal considerations for Canadian employers requiring cross-border travel in the Trump era?
By: Julius Melnitzer | November 25, 2025 With travel to the U.S. becoming anxious, if not risky, for many Canadians, employers are facing the prospect of employees refusing to travel south of the border. But can employers require employees to do so, and do employees have a basis on which to refuse? “My advice to employers […]
Moving on Up
Photo by Kampus at Pexels By Murray Gottheil | November 24, 2025 One of my former partners checked out my profile on LinkedIn the other day. Since he is a litigator, my paranoid streak – honed to perfection during my 40-year career – got me thinking that perhaps he was trying to find an address for […]
BARE BONES BRIEFS: Rapper Drake accused of promoting illegal gambling | AI replacing arbitrators | Trump: lawyers’ public service work “illegal” | Government convicted of ignoring itself | Cozen beefs up estates practice
By Julius Melnitzer | November 23, 2025 DRAKE SUED FOR “GLAMORIZING” GAMBLING Justin Killham, a Missouri resident, has initiated a class action against Drake and others for promoting Stake, an online casino. The claim alleges that the Curaçao-based platform violates gambling laws by using a “dual currency” system designed to evade gambling regulations, and that […]
Three certainties: bureaucracy, taxes and bagels
By Marcel Strigberger | November 13, 2025 A sudden impulse struck me recently at my nearby Sobey’s supermarket, causing me to buy a package of bagel chips. For the uninitiated, this product consists of about one bagel or so, toasted, thinly sliced, and packaged. Unlike its one-piece version, which sells for about a dollar, this […]
Partnership, Not the Holy Grail, Part 9: She Left The Suds In the Bucket and the Clothes Hanging Out on the Line
Photo by Yaroslav Shuraev at Pexels By Murray Gottheil | November 12, 2025 Getting into a partnership can be exciting. Staying in one is often more of a mixed bag. But exiting a partnership? Now we have something to talk about! Some of my best client work involved partnership break-ups. They can become very nasty, very […]
China’s New Draft Trademark Law Strengthens Brand Protection
“To navigate the new regime effectively, registered trademark owners must proactively maintain evidence of use, monitor third-party filings, and act swiftly against infringements.” – Amy Chan By Julius Melnitzer | November 7, 2025 China’s National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) has proposed a new law aimed at strengthening trademark protection. From the perspective of foreign businesses and […]
Duping the Dupes: An IP Rights Holder’s Combat Strategy
“Fast fashion, fast beauty, and the like have combined with the rise of social media influencers who can quickly promote low-cost goods in ways never seen before to create a perfect competitive storm for rights holders.” – Thomas Huthwaite By Julius Melnitzer | November 6, 2025 Monitoring “dupes”—products that mimic the look, feel and function of […]
The Corporation—Neither a Soul to Be Damned nor an Ass to Be Kicked
By Marcel Strigberger | November 4. 2025 Just one more thing … There’s something that bothers me – – – Columbo I shall start off by quoting Shakespeare: “Fie on the company!” Well, to be accurate, the bard did say the fie part. Now retired from practice, I am reflecting on what it is about […]
Partnership, Not the Holy Grail, Part Eight: All for One, but Me for Me
Photo by Pexels By Murray Gottheil | November 3, 2025 Back in the days when everything seemed to be a binary choice, I was a young man who saw many things in black and white. At the time, I would classify law firms as being one of two types. Type One were “real” partnerships, where people […]
Bare Bones Briefs: App predicts judges’ behaviour | Alberta lawyer challenges Law Society’s “wokism” | Solicitor sparks “collective screaming” for stress relief | Are “lawyer apprenticeships” the future of legal education?
By Julius Melnitzer | October 31, 2025 PROFILING THE JUDICIARY DMS developer NetDocuments has joined the wave of judicial analytics app creators, growing the number of profile creator software offerings to eighteen. According to Artificial Lawyer, the Judge Analytics App “transforms curated collections of judicial order into a structured dataset”. The developer claims that users […]