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In Canada, like the USA, exclusions to patentable subject matter are driven primarily by the courts. Two recent decisions by the Canadian Patent Appeal Board (one on patentability of business methods and the other on the patentability of methods of medical treatment) have highlighted the inherent difficulty of crafting exclusions to patentable subject matter grounded not on legislative intent but on judicial activism.Courts, patent examiners, and the patent appeal board should be slow to deny patents where their subject matter is considered ineligible; rather patent applications should be assessed by the traditional criteria of patentability (namely, novelty, inventiveness, and utility). If the subject matter can be made to fit within the definition of ‘invention’ (even if slightly uncomfortably), the courts should aim to ‘breathe life’ into the bare, sometimes dated, words of the patent statute. Since the patent statutes are drafted with a view to the unforeseen, any judicial interpretation of the word ‘invention’ must give deference to this vision. A theory of subject-matter eligibility is also proposed.
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This article reviews Canadian cases involving claims for misfeasance in a public office that have been decided since the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Odhavji Estate v. Woodhouse. Three main trends are apparent. First, plaintiffs who claim in misfeasance have some procedural advantages, including an expanded scope of discovery and greater resistance to defendants’ motions to strike. Second, the misfeasance tort serves an “ombudsman” function, tainting the defendant’s conduct as abusive and providing a greater degree of psychological vindication to plaintiffs. Finally, in some limited circumstances, misfeasance claims may have a better chance of success than negligence claims, as they dispense with the somewhat troublesome requirements of proximity and policy.
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Heather MacIvor, 2010 19-1 Constitutional Forum 11, 2010 CanLIIDocs 534
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This article is a summary of the research carried out in relation to the experiences of asylum-seeking and refugee families regarding access and participation in local childcare services. Focus groups and interviews were carried out with 16 refugee and asylum-seeking parents, five childcare practitioners, and two support and development staff in a small, mainly rural county, in the northwest of Ireland. Following a review of the literature in relation to social networks, social capital and social support, the research was designed to establish the perceptions of service users as well as service providers. The findings showed that levels of isolation experienced by both refugee and asylum-seeking families, largely because of current policy provisions, had a significant impact on their ability to develop informal supports networks in their host community. Families found that the formal and informal networks provided through childcare services were sources of valuable support. Both service users and staff identified a number of challenges in meeting various needs and in providing culturally responsive services. Challenges identified by service users came from their living experiences in the direct provision system, and social exclusion experienced by both asylum-seeking and refugee families, such as the cost of childcare and isolation. Communication and language barriers present as a significant challenge for both service users and service providers.
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Roncarelli is remembered fifty years later particularly because of Justice Rand’s now iconic statement that “there is no such thing as absolute and untrammelled discretion.” Justice Rand defined “untrammelled discretion” as circumstances where action can be taken on any ground or for any reason that can be suggested to the mind of the decision maker. This statement has been understood to mean that all public regulation exercised through discretionary decision-making by executive officials has legal boundaries, and that the role of the courts is to ensure that decisions do not exceed those boundaries.
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Recent DNA exonerations have shed light on the problem that people sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit. Drawing on police practices, laws concerning the admissibility of confession evidence, core principles of psychology, and forensic studies involving multiple methodologies, this White Paper summarizes what is known about police-induced confessions. In this review, we identify suspect characteristics (e.g., adolescence; intellectual disability; mental illness; and certain personality traits), interrogation tactics (e.g., excessive interrogation time; presentations of false evidence; and minimization), and the phenomenology of innocence (e.g., the tendency to waive Miranda rights) that influence confessions as well as their effects on judges and juries. This article concludes with a strong recommendation for the mandatory electronic recording of interrogations and considers other possibilities for the reform of interrogation practices and the protection of vulnerable suspect populations.
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Disclaimer: This summary was generated by AI based on the content of the source document.
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Disclaimer: This summary was generated by AI based on the content of the source document.
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