University of Toronto Law School Faculty Blog

Profs. Trebilcock and Iacobucci - "Patent protection, the new mother of invention"

This commentary was first published on the Globe and Mail website on September 22, 2009.

After years of effort, a Toronto startup company called i4i invented an important piece of technology to dramatically enhance software programs, such as Microsoft Word. Recognizing its potential, i4i obtained a U.S. patent to protect, and hopefully prosper from, the invention. The company also began marketing the technology as a separate product that worked with Word. A Texas court ruled last month that in 2003, Microsoft began to bundle i4i's patented technology in its dominant software without i4i's knowledge or consent. The smaller company was successful in establishing willful patent infringement, winning damages for the past and an injunction to protect i4i in the future. Microsoft strongly objects to these remedies, arguing at trial that i4i is analogous to a banker seeking a bailout. This analogy is entirely inapposite, and the remedy the court awarded is entirely appropriate in light of its finding of infringement.

Patents are essential to the modern system of innovation. Once produced, information can be transmitted at zero cost. In the absence of patent protection, would-be inventors become vulnerable to competition that would drive the value of their discovery to zero, leaving them with no compensation for the costs of producing that information in the first place. Patent protection allows inventors the benefit of limited competition for a limited time period, giving them an incentive to invest without concern about their innovation's appropriation by others.

Prof. Anita Anand - "Why macro is prudent"

This commentary was first published in the Financial Post on September 23, 2009.

The G20 leaders meet today in Pittsburgh. While macroprudential regulation is likely to be on the agenda, countries continue to wrestle with how, if at all, this concept fits within existing legal frameworks and indeed whether new regulators or committees will be created in each country. But, taking a step back, what does "macroprudential regulation" mean? Should Canada proceed down this road? If so, how?

Macroprudential regulation focuses on the financial system as a whole, seeking to minimize system-wide distress in order to avoid reductions in aggregate output (GDP). This is unlike microprudential regulation which seeks to minimize distress in individual institutions in order to protect depositors. Macroprudential regulation focuses on common exposures across financial systems and institutions rather than the entity-specific focus of microprudential regulation.

Prof. Ed Morgan: A Terrorist on the Faculty?

Cross-posted from www.NewMajority.com (first published July 31, 2009)

The Middle East dispute may seem interminable, but its shadow conflict – the one being waged on university campuses – appears every bit as complex and insoluble.

The latest round in Canada involves Hassan Diab, an Ottawa-based lecturer who for a number of years has had a part time appointment teaching Introduction to Sociology at Carleton University’s summer program. French authorities have asked for his extradition from Canada, accusing him of being the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist that blew up a Paris synagogue in 1980. Four people died in the bombing on Rue Copernic, and the incident signaled a wave of attacks against Jewish targets that brought the ongoing Israeli-Arab fight home to European Jews in a startlingly new way.

Prof. Mohammad Fadel - "President Obama Passes the Muslim Test"

I have written some very brief comments on President Obama’s speech yesterday in Cairo on the web page of patheos.com.  Essentially, I stated that Obama’s speech could genuinely represent an important break from U.S. policy towards the Islamic world in general and the Arab world in particular.  Clearly, one speech cannot change the world, but if Obama follows through with the ideas that he announced in yesterday’s speech, there may be renewed cause for optimism.

Read my full comments at:
http://www.patheos.com/Explore/Additional-Resources/Mohammad-Fadel.html

Mohammad Fadel

Prof. Ed Morgan - "It's a legal maze for Canadian authorities abroad"

This commentary by Prof. Ed Morgan was first published in The Globe and Mail on May 27, 2009.

Canadians may be surprised to learn a few things about our constitutional law.

First, the military owes no duty toward detainees arrested by us and turned over to a foreign state for custody.

Second, our intelligence service does owe a duty toward prisoners taken into custody by a foreign state and turned over to us for interrogation.

Third, our diplomats are obliged to intervene with a foreign legal system that fails to live up to our domestic standards of punishment.

And fourth, our police are free to comply with a foreign legal system that fails to live up to our domestic standards of search and seizure.

When it comes to the powers of the Canadian government abroad, each new court ruling makes us wonder if the judges took the time to read the last one. How did this confused state of affairs come to be?

DLS Executive Director Judith McCormack - "When poverty becomes respectable"

Judith McCormack is the executive director of Downtown Legal Services, the community legal clinic of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.

First published in the Toronto Star on May 17, 2009.

As painful as the current economic crisis may be, it does at least provide us with some valuable insights.

Now that the threat of poverty has suddenly landed on the doorsteps of so many ordinary, hard-working people, it forces us to see this particular problem in a new and clear-eyed way. In fact, many of the myths about poverty have gone up in smoke, much like Bernard Madoff's investments.

Try as we might to cling to the outdated idea that poor people are lazy or dependent, we're now face to face with the evidence that layoffs, economic restructuring and market forces can quickly push any of us into dire straits.

We've lost our ability to pretend that poor people are "them." Alas, it turns out they could be us, or our neighbours, friends and relatives.

This uncomfortable revelation has the effect of highlighting the ways in which we normally stigmatize the poor, and the punitive nature of our social policies toward them.

Ed Morgan - "In Yellowknife, language rights go back on the menu"

First published in the Globe and Mail, April 21, 2009.

In taking on the chef who runs the famed Wildcat Cafe, Yellowknife's city council appears to have concocted a recipe for bringing Quebec-style language politics to the Northwest Territories. In the process, it has given us the basis for a constitutional crise du jour.

The iconic eatery in Yellowknife's Old Town sports a log cabin veneer, rough wooden benches and floors, and a pedigree that harks back to the 1930s prospectors who founded it and the miners and bush pilots who made it a frontier landmark. The building was designated a heritage site in the early 1990s and it has been leased out by a municipal committee to licensed operators since reopening as a popular tourist destination in the late 1970s.

Jacob Ziegel: "Who Cares About the Consumer?"

Jacob Ziegel is a Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Toronto. Professor Ziegel has written widely about consumer law problems.

As Canadians brace themselves for the hardships of the country’s worst recession in more than twenty-five years, they are entitled to ask what protection they can expect against the many abuses that abound in the market place and the many more that are sure to emerge as unconscionable businesses and outright swindlers seeks to exploit consumer vulnerabilities during the recession.

The answer to the question is that consumers can expect very little help from federal or provincial governments. In some cases, in fact, governments are part of the problem and not likely to provide the solutions.

The picture was not always so bleak. In the 1970s, a wave of euphoria swept across Canada and federal and provincial governments vied with each other in introducing new consumer protection legislation and in establishing new ministries to administer and enforced the new programmes. Canada was the first country to establish a federal Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, and Ontario followed closely on its heels with the establishment of a Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations.

Anita Anand - "Canada's banks: conservative by nature"

This commentary was first published in the Financial Post on March 31, 2009.

In a recent interview with a major U.S. news network, Prime Minister Stephen Harper touted the fine regulatory balance that underpins the strength of Canadian financial institutions. Without question, Canadian banks have been relatively insulated from the economic turmoil that has crippled their U.S. counterparts. But why is this case? What characteristics particular to the Canadian economy and corresponding legal regime have protected Canada’s financial institutions?

If we look deeply, we see that Prime Minister Harper is partially right: The regulatory regime is an important factor to consider. Yet other considerations, including a conservative mentality that pervades our financial system and its players, are also relevant in the analysis.