Have you ever tried to find dockets for a Canadian Court? Then you know how frustrating it can be!

Ted Tjaden, the National Director of Knowledge Management at McMillan LLP, made a great chart available on the website for his book Legal Research and Writing.

As outlined by Ted, the following jurisdictions provide access to court dockets:

Federal

• Federal Court – free to search and view dockets, charge for documents
• Federal Court of Appeal – free to search and view dockets, charge for documents
• Supreme Court of Canada – free to search and view dockets, some documents available

Regional

• British Columbia – free to search, charges for looking at dockets and documents
• Manitoba – free to search
• Quebec – charged by the search/document (database only available in French)
• Nova Scotia – very limited information available for free (limited time frame)

Paid databases available:

• Litigator (available on Westlaw Canada) – court documents (limited to cases reported by Carswell reporters)
•  Bloomberg Law – only style of cause, docket number, type and category available for Toronto Court only
• Equifax Commercial Law Record – name, city, date of the action, amount and type of action, reason for the action, name of the court and its location and plaintiff’s name, no court documents
• Dun & Bradstreet Credit Check Reports – the number and value of legal filings (suits, liens, judgments), no court documents

Other useful sources for court documents:

• Plaintiff Class Action Websites
• National Class Action Database (Statements of Claim only)
• Insolvency monitor websites

Christine DeLuca
SLA Legal Division Canadian Ambassador

On May 8, many people got to watch the Queen’s Speech. No, this wasn’t a sequel to the film The King’s Speech, but a ceremonial event, full of pomp and pageantry, which dates back many years. It is part of the State Opening of Parliament in Westminster and marks the formal start of the Parliamentary year.

The State Opening begins with the Queen’s procession from Buckingham Palace to Westminster and to the House of Lords. After she arrives at the House, Black Rod (a House of Lords official) goes to summon the members of the House of Commons to the Lords. As he does so, the doors to the Commons are shut in his face – a tradition which dates back to the Civil War to symbolise the Commons’ independence. After knocking on the door three times, he enters the Commons and addresses the Speaker, commanding the members of the Commons to “attend her Majesty immediately”. Members of the Commons then follow Black Rod to the House of Lords to listen to the speech.

The length of the speech has varied over the years – the Guardian has compiled some data on the word count of the speeches since 1994. You can see how the length peaked in the late 1990s – the first years of the new Labour government – and the recent speeches have been comparatively quite short.

The Queen doesn’t actually write the speech herself – it is written by the Government and sets out the legislative agenda for the forthcoming Parliamentary term. This year’s speech contained announcements of Bills relating to intellectual property, the High-Speed Two railway line, the reform of long-term care, pensions – along with many more.

Further reading:
•    The Guardian has produced a helpful explanation of what was said in the speech
•    The Daily Telegraph have provided a timeline of events of the day.
•    Follow the hashtag: #QueensSpeech on Twitter.
•    Watch the State Opening on YouTube.
•    Parliament.uk: State Opening of Parliament explained

Anneli Sarkanen
SLA Legal Division International Relations Committee

Members of the Legal Division may be intrigued to read about a recent decision here in the UK relating to copyright and reading material on the internet. What makes this case interesting is the effect this could have on everyday users of the internet and their day-to-day browsing.

When a webpage is viewed on a computer, temporary copies are made in the internet cache on the hard disk of the computer. No actual copy made unless the webpage is downloaded or printed. Temporary copies of copyright material on a computer is dealt with by section 28A of the Copy, Designs and Patents Act 1988, which gives effect to an EU Directive giving copyright owners various rights.

In this case, a company called Meltwater (often used by marketing departments) provides members of a professional association with programmes to create a daily index of words appearing on newspaper websites in order to monitor news coverage for clients – customers supply Meltwater with search terms and a report is produced listing the results.

The question to be considered was whether Meltwater’s customers needed a licence from the Newspaper Licensing Agency to receive its service as the report is made available only on Meltwater’s website. The lower courts held that a licence would be required.

The Supreme Court judges said that because the temporary copying is necessary for the internet to work, a licence would not be required – if so, then everyday users could be held liable. Lord Sumption clarified: “if it is an infringement merely to view copyright material, without downloading or printing out, then those who browse the internet are likely unintentionally to incur civil liability, at least in principle, by merely coming upon a web-page containing copyright material in the course of browsing. This seems an unacceptable result, which would make infringers of many millions of ordinary users of the internet across the EU who use browsers and search engines for private as well as commercial purposes.”

On Wednesday last week, the UK Supreme Court gave its provisional views on how the Directive should be interpreted and then referred the question to the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) asking them to rule on whether these temporary copies breach copyright laws.

So whilst there is no decision on this issue yet (we will have to wait a while for the ECJ’s decision and then for our courts to rule again) I think it is interesting to consider what impact this may have on everyday users of the internet and the work we do as information professionals, including advising other departments on copyright, if it is decided these temporary copies are held to breach copyright – heaven forbid!

Please note that the above is a summary of the case as I see it.  I am not legally qualified and this should not be taken as legal advice!

Further reading:

• Judgment: Public Relations Consultants Association Limited v Newspaper Licensing Agency and others, [2013] UKSC 18
• Press summary from Supreme Court (pdf)
• Field Fisher Waterhouse e-alerter
• Newspaper Licensing Agency press release (pdf)

Anneli Sarkanen
SLA Legal Division International Relations Committee

Hi, I am Anneli Sarkanen, your new SLA Legal Division International Relations Committee Chair. I am an Information Officer at Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP in London. I wish to thank my predecessor Sara Batts, who was chair of this committee in 2012.

This month saw the start of the new lunar year and the Year of the Snake, with millions of people across Asia celebrating with firework displays and family gatherings.

It seems predictions for the year can be elusive and the last two snake years (2001 and 1989) have seen major events take place in the world. To help with any uncertainty this year may bring, the SLA Legal Division International Relations Committee has put together a list of resources to make researching Chinese law less haphazard.

This is brought to you with great thanks to our Legal Division colleague Dave Lyons, who is working as an academic librarian for the Beijing Centre for Chinese Studies.

EN = English language site; ZH = Chinese.

Laws & Regulations:

AsianLII: http://www.asianlii.org/cn/legis/cen/laws/ EN

Laws of the People’s Republic of China. This database contains selected Chinese legislation and related documents that have been translated into English. It includes: laws, regulations, pronouncements, resolutions, notices, measures, rules, decisions, decrees, principles, provisions, announcements, procedures, official replies and circulars (in interim, current and/or planned versions). Some warning: All translations are unofficial and it says it was last updated in March 2008.

Hong Kong Legal Information Institute: http://www.hklii.hk/eng/databases.html EN

HKLII is a free, independent, non-profit internet facility providing access to legal information relating to Hong Kong, including cases and legislative materials.

ChinaLaw: http://www.chinalaw.gov.cn/article/english/# EN

The official English page of the Legislative Affairs Office, but the translation quality is a bit suspect and more importantly the site has not been updated since 2007. The Chinese version (http://www.chinalaw.gov.cn/ ZH), however, is up-to-date.

China Law Translate: http://chinalawtranslate.com/ EN

This website was conceived by Jeremy Daum, a research fellow at the Yale-China Law Center and is a crowd-sourcing project to provide translations of Chinese legislation into English and vice versa. The site has yet to really get going but is an interesting concept. Naturally, as it is a wiki-style project, there is no note about the quality of the translation.

en.pkulaw.com http://en.pkulaw.cn/ EN

This website comes from Chinalawinfo Co, an provider of legal information, established by Peking University on the basis of its Legal Information Center. Access to English-language versions of “all the relevant documents for your legal needs in China”. There are notes and links in the Chinese text, but only English translations are provided for the main contents, not the notes. Contains laws and regulations (all laws adopted by the National People’s Congress from 1949 to present), case law database of typical judicial decisions approved and published by the Supreme People’s Court or the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, Tax treaties, Gazettes (title index only) and legal news. Subscription required for access to certain content.

Law Lib: http://www.law-lib.com/law/ ZH

Donald Clarke of George Washington University Law School says “This is a quite comprehensive free database of Chinese laws and regulations. It includes a great deal of local legislation, departmental regulations, and Supreme People’s Court interpretations. The main drawback is that it is not full-text-searchable; you can search by terms in the title or the issuing body. A nice feature is that you can separate central from local legislation in your results.”

China Law Reference Service: http://www.clrsonline.com/ EN

According to NYU Law Library, “Chinese legal materials in English at Baker & McKenzie. It is more a digest than a full-text database. CLRS contains news on the latest PRC regulations relevant to business, an advanced search facility that allows searching by keyword, year, category, region and translation.” Subscription required.

China Law & Practice: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?RQT=318&VName=PQD&clientid=9269&pmid=52143 EN

NYU Law says: “The printed publication is known as “Asia Law and Practice”. Publishes news, a law digest, business law bulletins, archives, and lists of events.” Subscription required.

Ceilaw: http://www.ceilaw.com.cn/ ZH

NYU Law says: “A fee-based service in the vernacular provided by the State Info Center, a governmental agency.”

Research Guides & Online Resource Lists:

Internet Chinese Legal Research Center: http://law.wustl.edu/chinalaw/ EN/ZH

Wei Luo’s guide of online law resources for PRC, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/law/help/guide/nations/china.php EN

The Library of Congress has some helpful links, including:

• Donald Clarke’s list of online resources, including LawInfoChina, Law-Lib.com, and other more general resources: http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dclarke/public/Chinese_Law_Resources.html EN
• A very helpful bilingual guide to the government’s departments, structure, and personnel. Maintained by the Chinese government: http://www.prcgov.org/ EN/ZH

Anneli Sarkanen
SLA Legal Division International Relations Committee

The International Relations Committee brings you two recent judgments this month on the application of domestic laws on international businesses. The first judgment is a defamation action against Google. The second is an insolvency decision in the United Kingdom involving US and Australian Companies.

Defamation

Google has just lost a defamation case in Australia. From a news article,

“Google was yesterday found liable for damages by a jury in Australia after a man complained that the website’s search results had harmed his reputation by wrongly linking him to Melbourne gang crime.”

There is no judgment as yet on the damages, if you are interested keep an eye on the Recent Decisions page on Austlii. Earlier decisions are on Austlii.

Trkulja v Google Inc LLC & Anor (No 5) [2012] VSC 533 (12 November 2012) –   Judgment

Trkulja v Google Inc & Anor [2011] VSC 560 (3 November 2011) – Discovery

Trkulja v Google  Inc & Anor (No 3) [2011] VSC 503 (5 October 2011) – Confidentiality

Trkulja v Google Inc & Anor (No 2) [2010] VSC 490 – (28 October 2010) DEFAMATION – Pleading

Trkulja v Google Inc LLC & Anor [2010] VSC 226 (27 May 2010) – DEFAMATION – Pleading

Earlier this year Mr Trkulja won a similar case against Yahoo, Trkulja v Yahoo! Inc LLC & Anor [2012] VSC 88 (15 March 2012).

International Jurisdiction

The UK Supreme Court in New Cap Re v Grant (the case involved US and Australian interests) has decided that a foreign judgment cannot be enforced where a party has not submitted to the foreign jurisdiction.

The judgment asserts the importance of the territorial limits of foreign jurisdiction in insolvency proceedings, and the value of the UNCITRAL Model Law. See also the very handy Press summary.

Phil Mullen
SLA Legal Division International Relations Committee

Mates for life – International Law Firms Merger – An update from down under.

International law firm activity has continued to develop in the Australian legal market. Late in June Freehills one of the largest Australian Law Firms entered into a full financial merger with Herbert Smith. The new firm will be known as Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF).

HSF claim the new firm will be the largest integrated legal practice in the Asia Pacific region. With 7 different offices spread across the Asia Pacific region.

The International insurance firm Clyde & Co has raided the insurance partners in the newly aligned Allen’s (Aust) and Linklaters. Clyde & Co will be opening new offices in Sydney and Perth in early October.

Whether these mergers and new firms in Australia will provide more work for Information Services/Law Library people in Australia will be interesting to see. Or will this hasten the development of outsourcing?

Phil Mullen
SLA Legal Division International Relations Committee

The International Relations Committee brings you soccer-themed round up of European useful links.

England were (not unsurprisingly) eliminated from the Euro 2012 football competition this week – another penalty shoot out deciding the team’s fate.  Still,  Wimbledon is now under way, and we’ve got the Olympics coming up – literally on our doorstep here in the City of London – so there is plenty of summer left for us Brits to get our fix of sport. We thought a few links to useful resources from the teams still in the soccer tournament might be of interest – so here’s a round up of some key legal sites that might help with queries (or not!) about the remaining Euro 2012 countries or the Olympic games.

The European Union publishes short guides to each country’s legal system – a good place to start.

Portugal
https://e-justice.europa.eu/content_member_state_law-6-pt-en.do?member=1

Italy
https://e-justice.europa.eu/content_member_state_law-6-it-en.do?member=1

Spain
https://e-justice.europa.eu/content_member_state_law-6-es-en.do?member=1

Germany
https://e-justice.europa.eu/content_member_state_law-6-de-en.do?member=1

The amount, currency and quality of freely available local information varies between individual companies. I’d say I have a 50:50 hit rate obtaining a case or a piece of legislation for free in the searches I have run. Other sources include Lexis.com and academic libraries – I’ve used the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies to obtain documents in the past.

Company information is available either via agents for the European Business Register or individual country directories. Google Translate may be your friend when negotiating European business registers, there is little consistency between countries about what is available and what is searchable online independently.

Portugal – you can register a company online here http://www.portaldaempresa.pt/CVE/pt/EOL but obtaining documents via http://www.irn.mj.pt/sections/inicio/ seems to be difficult.

Spain – the companies’ register can’t be searched outside a subscription service in any detail – the site is at http://www.rmc.es/InfGeneral.aspx?lang=en.

Italy – I have never managed to obtain anything useful directly from http://www.infocamere.it/eng/about_us.htm so have generally resorted to agents.

Germay – details are here  https://www.unternehmensregister.de/ureg/?submitaction=language&language=en

This PDF provides indicative pricing and availability for EU countries’ company information… http://www.gbrdirect.eu/GBRDirect%20Pricelist.pdf , other agents are available (see also http://www.7side.co.uk/moreinfo/International_Registry_and_Documents_Service.pdf from UK agents 7Side)

If you want to know more about the Olympics, the official site is at http://www.london2012.com/ and the BBC’s getting geared up over at http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/2012/

Wishing you a happy summer of sport,

Sara Batts

International Relations Chair

The Australian Law Firm market is in the process of being reshaped as a number of large Australian law firms merge or form alliances with international firms. Traditionally the large Australian firms have dominated the Australian legal market and made it difficult for foreign firms to gain a foothold.

Many of the mergers are using Australian law firms reach into the Asian market place, to capitalise on the shift of the world economy to Asia with the rise of the Chinese and Indian economies.

Merger mania kicked of nearly two years ago with the arrival Norton Rose who merged with Deacons. Then in 2011 DLA Piper merged with the Australian firm Phillips Fox.

Since mid May 2011 the international invasion has been unprecedented. Clifford Chance merged with two small boutique firms in Sydney and Perth. Allen and Overy raided a number of partners from the Australian law firm Clayton Utz and Squire Sanders poached the Perth office of Minter Ellison.

This year, Ashurst has merged with Australian law firm Blake Dawson Waldron. Blakes is now known as Ashurst. The most significant development is the merger of the Australian law firm Mallesons (by revenue Australia’s largest law firm) with the Chinese firm King and Wood, in a deal that could “potentially catapult it to one of the largest law firms in China”.

Finally this week we have seen one of Australia’s most prestigious law firm Allens Arthur Robinson establish an Asian alliance with Linklaters.

There is talk of other major firms merging or entering alliances. Two years ago all these developments would have been unthinkable. The reality is that the GFC has changed legal business in Australia and the rest of the world.

I am unsure what all this means for Australian Libraries or Knowledge people. In the short term I suppose it means we will have to start thinking about how to access more international sources and form our own alliances with friendly SLA people in Asia.

Phil Mullen

International Relations Committee, SLA Legal Division