On March 18, 2005, the Quebec Court of Appeal handed down an important decision confirming that the evidence relating to the behaviour and practices of a “reasonable insurer” need not be provided by an expert witness. In CGU Compagnie d’assurances du Canada v. Sylvain Paul et al., (J.E. 2005-705), Justices Louise Mailhot, René Dussault and Marie-France Bich dealt with this issue in connection with an objection to evidence made by the attorney representing the insured, Mr ...
The Ministry of Information Industry ("MII") promulgated the Measures for the Administration of the Filing for the Record of Non-Commercial Internet Information Services (the "Recordal Measures") on 8 February 2005. The Recordal Measures took effect on 20 March 2005. It provides detailed guidelines on recordal filings for non-commercial websites ...
Summary ‡ Information security “breaches” take many forms and occur in a wide variety of settings. However, contrary to recent press reports, they do not appear to be increasing. ‡ Research indicates that only a small percentage of breaches result in any harmful use of data. ‡ Account fraud and true identity fraud — the two identity-based frauds most feared by consumers and policy makers — are actually declining ...
At the end of June, the US entertainment industry won a long fought victory to help bring file swappers to heel ...
The European Parliament dealt a blow to programmers seeking clarity on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions last month when it rejected a draft European Directive on the subject (the "CII Directive") by an overwhelming majority ...
On April 4, 2005, the Court of Appeal issued its decision in CGU v. The Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company and Axa Insurance1, which sheds new light on the right of a subrogated insurer to institute legal proceedings directly against the insurer of the person allegedly responsible for the loss. The decision also contains a discussion of the concept of solidarity between insurer and insured for the purposes of the interruption of prescription ...
The recent decision of the Court of Quebec, Small Claims Division, in the case of Spénard v. Promutuel Bois-Francs, société mutuelle d’assurance générale,1 revisited the issue of the right of an insurer to seek the nullity of an insurance policy based on an insured’s failure to disclose a prior conviction under the Young Offenders Act. The Plaintiff claimed $5,100 from his insurer for property stolen from his home between January 24 and January 27, 2003 ...
Germany. November 9, 1938. Kristallnacht. “The Night of Broken Glass.” Nazi secret police and the Hitler youth swarm over Jewish businesses and homes, terrorizing and victimizing helpless individuals all over the country.1 SS leadership orchestrates attacks on every vestige of Jewish culture as “punishment” for fictitious crimes that will never be recognized by the rest of the world ...
On December 31, 2005, amendments to Ontario’s Securities Act will come into effect to provide investors with a new recourse against companies and their directors, officers, employees and consultants for any misrepresentation in their public documents or public oral statements, or for failure to make timely disclosure of material changes in the company’s circumstances ...
The European Union has recently launched a new ccTLD (country code top level domain). Instead of using the various national European ccTLD's, such as .fr for French companies, .de for German companies, and .co.uk for U.K. companies, the EU has made available the .eu suffix as a Community-wide ccTLD. The new domain extension has already proved widely popular, with more than 100,000 applications for domain names filed thus far ...
On 1 May 2004 a new and revised Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation (the TTBER) entered into force - Regulation No. 772/2004. The TTBER will provide block exemptions for IP licensing agreements, ensuring that certain technology transfer agreements are automatically exempt from the application of Article 81(1) of the EC Treaty, which prohibits anti-competitive agreements ...
Internet telephones are set to take the global communications industry by storm. Big names like Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo! and eBay are piling into the market and former state-run telecoms providers like BT are also investing. The technology was first developed by the US Defense Department as part of a research project on interconnection in the 1970s. But until recently only techno-geeks have had the interest and ability to make any use of it. But times have changed ...
The courts have always considered Quebec’s class action legislation to be strictly procedural and not modifying substantive law. Normally a person can only sue if he has a legal relationship with the defendant, meaning that he has a personal right of action. Thus, in the case of Bouchard v. Agropur coopérative et al,1 Mr. Justice J. Viens refused to authorize Bouchard to institute a class action against dairies from which he had not purchased milk. However, Mr. Justice M ...
Complaints by foreign businesses regarding protection of intellectual property rights in China have been a consistent feature in media reports since large scale foreign investment commenced some 20 years ago. However, China's economic revolution over the same period means that opinions based on negative experiences in the past must be constantly reassessed ...
Dominant companies have special responsibility to ensure that the way they do business doesn’t prevent competition on the merits and does not harm consumers and innovation», said European Competition Commissioner Mário Monti, regarding the Commission’s Microsoft decision dated March 24th, 2004 ...
The interoperability information on Microsoft’s decision deserves special attention by the undertakings that have a dominant position in the market. Intellectual property rights, granted as an incentive for the creation of innovation and as a tool to recoup the investments made by companies, used to be understood as providing several rights to its owners ...
The Police and Justice Bill was put before the House of Commons on 25 January 2006. The main aim of the Bill is to improve the powers and scope of the police force but there are a number of sections which look to update the Computer Misuse Act 1990 (CMA) and in particular to make Denial of Service (DOS) Attacks illegal. DOS attacks can take many forms but are essentially an attempt to disrupt the use of a computer, server or website ...
On June 29, 2006, the Supreme Court of Canada, in a decision written by Judges McLachlin and Abella, reinstated the judgment of the Supreme Court of British Columbia and set aside the $100,000 award for punitive damages of the Court of Appeal. At the same time, it upheld the judgment rendered by the two lower courts and condemned Sun Life to pay the insured $20,000 in compensatory damages for mental distress caused by the breach of the disability insurance contract ...
Every day in Mumbai, India, a team of 5,000 couriers deliver, collect and return 200,000 lunch boxes. This massive logistics operation is undertaken with an error rate of less than 1 in 8 million deliveries and without using any information technology. Enormous labour cost disparities enable this manual operation to be undertaken cost-effectively ...
Procuring and implementing an ICT system within an organisation can be a stressful task. High profile failures in both the public and private sectors hit the headlines all too often. The National Audit Office's report last month on the £6.2bn NHS IT upgrade in England put many of the challenges firmly in the spotlight. In the heat of the procurement process it is easy to forget some basic procurement principles ...
On May 12, 2006, the Court of Appeal rendered a decision in a case involving the concept of intentional fault.(1) This judgement, written by Judge Louis Rochette, once again further complicates the idea of an intentional fault committed by an insured. I. The facts Assurances générales des Caisses Desjardins Inc. (referred to herein as “Desjardins”) insured Mr. Fournier’s property. In May 1999, Mr. Fournier committed suicide by setting his home on fire ...
On July 17, 2006, the Court of Appeal rendered a judgement concerning the duty of financial institutions making loans to inform and advise their clients.(1) This decision, written by Judge Jacques Chamberland, sheds further light on the obligations of group loan insurance policyholders. The facts In early June 1994, the Respondent, 9000-7048 Québec inc ...
Open source software ("OSS") is quickly entering the mainstream and becoming increasingly widely used. In fact International Data Group analysts have predicted that the OSS marketplace will be worth £35 billion by 2008. OSS is software that is freely available (without discrimination) and can be copied, modified and redistributed ...
The IT outsourcing market has matured in the past years. Many IT outsourcing relationships are fruitful and long lasting. Nevertheless international surveys continue to show that numerous outsourcing deals are untimely terminated in the first two to four years. This paper highlights the key risk factors for failure of IT outsourcing relationships. These key risk factors will be underlined by various failed outsourcing case law. Such case law probably only represents the top of the iceberg ...
