Billions of dollars invested, not a penny lost.

$51-million class action
takes on commercial
legal database
N.S. to unveil legislation
after ongoing skirmishes
with the auditor general
PAGE 3
CRISTIN SCHMITZ OTTAWA

Do lawyers enjoy copyright in the facta, pleadings, motions and affidavits they file in open court and, if so, can their “works” be reproduced via a commercial on-line database, without permission or compensation?

Those are some questions recently raised by a novel $51-mil- lion class action for alleged “mass copyright infringement” that was filed in Ontario Superior Court last month against legal publishing giant Thomson Reuters Corp. and Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd., by prominent immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman.

The Toronto lawyer contends that the defendants’ Westlaw Litigator service is infringing his copyright, and that of hundreds, if not thousands, of other lawyers by reproducing (in PDF, Microsoft Word and other down-loadable formats), and making available on-line for a fee, more than 50,000 pleadings, court motions and facta the defendants recently copied from civil court files across Canada.

“The defendants have created a service whose sole purpose is to carry out mass copyright infringement for their own financial profit,” Waldman alleges in a May 25, 2010 statement of claim whose allegations are disputed by Thomson Reuters.

HANDS OFF

Bahrain’s arbitration
‘free zone’ prevents
court interference
PAGE 9

SPILLS

Louis Sokolov (r) and Jordan Goldblatt are representing Lorne Waldman in a class action against Thomson Reuters Corp.
PAUL LAWRENCE FOR THE LAWYERS WEEKLY

Argues Waldman, “in addition
to asserting that they own copy-
right in legal documents they did
not create, the defendants seek to
trade on the name and reputation
of the lawyer and /or firm who
actually drafted the document by
showing (and permitting search-
ing by) lawyers and firm names.”
Of course none of the lawsuit’s
allegations have been proven in
court. Absent settlement, the
case is also likely to take years to
be determined on the merits,
beginning with skirmishes over
class certification.
Waldman’s counsel Louis
Sokolov and Jordan Goldblatt of
Toronto’s Sack Goldblatt Mitchell
told The Lawyers Weekly the law-
suit breaks new ground in Canada.
They said they did not know of any
similar case having been decided
by a court elsewhere in the com-
mon law world.

Legal tactics to reduce
the frequency of spills
PAGE 14

SOCIAL
MEDIA

Social media at
your organization
PAGE 21
GENERAL COUNSEL
Law firm general counsel
PAGE 23
Chief prosecutor resigns from Quebec’s judicial nominations commission
LUIS MILLAN MONTREAL

The lead prosecutor who
resigned from the Bastarache
commission after being caught
in a maelstrom questioning his
impartiality “deeply regrets”
missing an end-of-career oppor-
tunity to leave his imprimatur
on the inquiry into alleged polit-
ical interference in the nomina-
tion of judges.

“I donate to the local parish even though I am not a churchgoer,” Cimon told The Lawyers Weekly. “I donate because I believe churches play an important social role. It doesn’t mean that I practice and believe in the church’s dogma or agree with Cardinal Marc Ouellet’s position that abor-

See Cimon Page 5

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