Sponsors must repay immigrants’ debt
CATHOLIC CHURCH
The Church’s response
to sexual abuse by priests

PAGE 9

SPERM DONATION
Donor offspring rights
and estate law
HACKERS

Governments have a proced- ural duty to act fairly unless that duty is displaced by clear statutory language or by necessary implica- tion, the Supreme Court of Can- ada has reaffirmed in an immigra- tion case of note to all administrative law practitioners. In a 9-0 ruling June 10, the top court partly allowed the appeal of the Attorneys General of Canada and Ontario against the Ontario Court of Appeal’s 2009 ruling in

Mavi v. Canada (Attorney General).

Justice Ian Binnie’s judgment
canvasses the doctrine of proced-
ural fairness, clarifying, among
other things, that the top court’s
milestone ruling in Dunsmuir v.
New Brunswick, [2008] S.C.J. No.
9, created “a rather narrow”
employment contract exception to
governments’ obligation of pro-
cedural fairness and “was not
intended to, and did not, other-
wise diminish the requirements of
procedural fairness in the exercise
of administrative authority.”
Two administrative law experts
cited by the high court told The
Lawyers Weekly that Mavi elabor-
ates on some important aspects of
administrative law.

“The court narrowed the application of Dunsmuir to contracts that are not provided by statute,” suggested Guy Régimbald of Ottawa’s Gowlings, author of Canadian Administrative Law.

“Where the
terms of a con-
tract or an
undertaking are
provided and
controlled by an
enabling statute,
the principles of public law will
apply, including procedural fair-
ness, rather than the law of con-
tracts,” he explained. “This clarifi-
cation will be a welcomed addition
to administrative law.”
Régimbald added that the
court also “affirmed a presump-
tion that procedural fairness will
apply to governmental action. Jus-
tice Binnie held that ‘it is certainly
not to be presumed that Parlia-
ment intended that administrative
officials be free to deal unfairly
with people subject to their deci-
sions’. Nevertheless, the court also
affirmed the Ocean Port [Hotel v.

British Columbia, [2001] S.C.J.
No. 17] decision that...[as] a doc-
trine of common law, the pre-
sumption that the duty of fairness
applies can be displaced by clear
statutory language or necessary
implication to the contrary.”
Donald J.M. Brown of Toron-
to’s Blakes, co-author of Judicial
Review of Administrative Action
in Canada, commented that
“Mavi simply reformulates and
restates the existing law, albeit in
Justice Binnie’s usual lucid style.”

TORONTO: Lucas Lung of Lerners LLP represented most of the immigration sponsors in the Mavi case. On June 15, the Advocates’ Society gave him the Arleen Goss Young Advocates’ Award for his outstanding record of advocacy.

PAUL LAWRENCE FOR THE LAWYERS WEEKLY

See Sponsors Page 5

Régimbald

CRISTIN SCHMITZ OTTAWA

Crown owes ’fairly
minimal’ duty of
fairness to sponsors THE LAWYERS WEEKLY

Vol. 22, No. 27 NEWS FOR THE LEGAL PROFESSION December 6, 2002

THE LAWYERS WEEKLY

VOL. 22, NO. 27 NEWS FOR THE LEGAL PROFESSION DECEMBER 6, 2002

PAGE 14

Major Canadian law
firms hacked recently

PAGE 22

i4i wins patent battle against Microsoft in top US court
SPECIALTIES
Hot specialties for 2011

ARNOLD CEBALLOS

A Toronto software company
has won a huge judgment worth
nearly $300 million against Micro-
soft Corporation after the United
States Supreme Court rejected
Microsoft’s appeal of a finding that
it infringed the smaller company’s
patent. In upholding the jury ver-
dict in favour of i4i Limited Part-
nership and patent co-owner
Infrastructures for Information
Inc., the high court refused to
lower the burden required to
invalidate a patent in the U.S.—a
decision with a widespread impact
beyond the facts of the case.

i4i sued Microsoft in 2007 for
infringing a patent on technology
to open documents using the
XML computer programming
language. A Texas jury ruled in
favour of i4i and ordered Micro-
soft to pay $200 million in dam-
ages. A judge increased the dam-
ages award to $290 million and
ordered Microsoft to stop selling
copies of its Word programs that
could open certain files con-
taining custom XML.

Microsoft unsuccessfully
appealed to the Federal Circuit
Court of Appeals and then further
appealed to the Supreme Court,
which agreed to hear the case. The
main legal issue the high court was
asked to consider involved the
standard to be considered when
invalidating a patent. Microsoft
urged the court to apply a “prepon-
derance of the evidence” standard,
while i4i argued that a higher
“clear-and-convincing evidence”
standard must apply. At issue in
the case was some prior technology
of i4i’s that Microsoft believed
called into question the validity of
the patent and which the Patent
Office did not review when grant-
ing the patent. The closely watched
case saw dozens of intervenors file
briefs on one or the other side of
the dispute, with the U.S. govern-

See i4i Page 7

THE LAWYERS WEEKLY

VOL. 22, NO. 27 NEWS FOR THE LEGAL PROFESSION DECEMBER 6, 2002

PAGE 23

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