Lawddities
An oddity in Business Law
Apple is facing a federal class-action lawsuit by parents claiming
that games designed for children and promoted as free actually lure
them into buying “in-apps” or virtual goods without parental consent.
Garen Meguerian, an attorney in Philadelphia, sued Apple when he
realized that his nine-year-old daughter had spent about $200 on his
credit card over a few days playing games such as “City Story” and
“Tap Fish” on an iPod Touch, according to The Huffington Post.
Who would have thought collecting some harmless Fish Bucks and
Smurfberries could lead to a lawsuit? — Anum Lateef
Lawddities
Legal Oddities in (Blank) Law
Parents sue Apple over ‘Fish Bucks’
JCJGPHOTOGRAPHY / DREAMSTIME.COM
Client microsite proves popular
DONALEE MOULTON
Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP
(FMC) is breaking new legal
ground in the virtual world. The
national law firm has created
the first microsite for clients — and prospective clients — to provide information,
insight and items of interest in
specific industry areas. More
microsites are about to follow.
“This is really a way to share
our knowledge in a one-stop
option,” said David Little, chair
of FMC’s Private Equity and
Venture Capital Group in
Ottawa. The first stopping place
is devoted to the issue of startups. Written by FMC’s legal
experts in technology, securities,
intellectual property and related
areas, the Technology Startup
Center provides users with a
guide to legal and business issues
they may face when launching a
technology company.
It includes, for example, articles, blogs and tweets on everything from threshold issues to
organizational structure to
shareholder agreements to
financing and more.
Top-viewed articles include
ones on vesting and buyback
rights, the anatomy of financing
and IP rights. Blog topics span a
range of subjects from converting employees to owners,
accredited investors and residuals clauses.
“There used to be a guide we
gave out. We just unleashed the
guide,” said Little. “This is just
really harnessing the power of
the Internet.”
The site is a savvy marketing
move. “We think it differentiates
us,” said Little. “There are lots of
Lawddities
Lawddities
(final)
blogs out there. There are lots of
people out there who tweet, but
we’re not aware of anything out
there that combines all three [of
our elements].”
In mining for new business
online, FMC had to first put in
resources on the ground. “The
key is having a foundation,” said
Warren Glenn, FMC’s digital
marketing coordinator in
Toronto. “Once this is built, the
real effort becomes content.”
Caution is required. Conflict
checks, for instance, are neces-
sary. “We were careful in setting
up the first site, and we will con-
tinue to be careful,” Little said.
“Doing these sites takes a lot of
collective commitment. They are
a much broader collaboration.”
Part of the push for a greater
presence online is the desire to
be firmly established at the fore-
front of the initiative — a first for
Canadian law firms, according
to FMC. “I expect other firms
will do this,” said Little, “but it
does require ongoing support.”
More microsites are already
in the works. Likely sectors
include energy, clean technol-
ogy, mining and securities. One
site is even expected to be avail-
able in Mandarin. Another addi-
tion may be the inclusion of
sample documents such as typ-
ical seed financing material.
“The content often reflects ques-
tions asked of lawyers,” noted
Glenn.
The effort appears to be pay-
ing off. “In May,” said Little, “we
had 2,000 unique visitors.”
“A lot of people coming to the
site are googling niche search
terms, and we have the answers
to those questions,” noted
Glenn. “Traffic is growing
month after month.” n
As lawyers, our reputations
are built on a variety of factors,
one of which is our ability to craft
persuasive arguments backed by
legal authority and solid facts.
Whether we’re negotiating the
terms of a commercial transaction for our clients or arguing
before a court, if our facts are
outlandishly erroneous or our
law is dead wrong, our reputations will suffer. And if our claims
amount to misrepresentations
or, dare I say, “untruths,” maybe
we’ll hear something from our
respective law societies.
Having watched, and at times
participated in B.C.’s HST debate
for almost a year, sometimes I
wonder what would happen if
there was a professional body able
to discipline the participants.
With the hockey season now over
in this hockey-mad province,
maybe we need a referee to give
offending players in the debate
major and minor penalties.
Former Premier Gordon
Campbell, arguably one of the
province’s more capable leaders,
made one of Canada’s dumbest
public policy mistakes in 2010
by introducing the HST in B.C.,
combining the GST with the old
B.C. PST, without having campaigned on it and without even
debating the tax in the provincial legislature. A groundswell of
opposition lead by former Premier Bill Vander Zalm, (who
resigned in disgrace in 1991)
lead to Campbell announcing a
referendum on the tax and his
resignation, which I suppose
would be a “career misconduct”
if this were a hockey game.
Although value-added taxes
like the GST and the HST are
embraced by both the political
left and right all over the world
and lauded by economists for
being fair and efficient taxes
that tax consumption and not
income, the B.C. public was
outraged at the way the tax was
brought in, even if the tax made
economic sense. An independent panel set up to assess the
tax found that there would
indeed be benefits to B.C. in
terms of more jobs and a
stronger provincial economy,
although the benefits may well
have been oversold by the provincial Liberals. (OK, give the
Liberals a two-minute minor
for overselling).
If the HST was oversold by the
provincial Liberals, the claims
coming from Vander Zalm’s
FightHST camp have been nothing short of ludicrous, and to
keep with the hockey metaphor
for a moment longer, even a
10-minute game misconduct isn’t
strong enough. (I’d suggest the
TONY
WILSON
“The B.C. public was
outraged at the way
the tax was brought
in, even if the tax
made economic sense.
“Quiet Room” if it were available
for penalties). But I’d give another
two-minute penalty to the provincial Liberals and another two
minutes to the business community in B.C. for not explaining
the tax well enough to British
Columbians, allowing Vander
Zalm to get away with uncalled
slashing, tripping, boarding,
back-checking and hooking.
Thank God for social media
and university students with
brains. A University of British
Columbia law student named
Chris Thompson took Vander
Zalm’s claims to task and created
a You Tube Video called “A letter
to Bill Vander Zalm.” It has been
seen almost 90,000 times. What
Thompson has done with social
media is what former premier
Campbell, the entire B.C. Liberal
caucus, the country’s leading
economists and new Premier
Christy Clark have been unable
to do very well with conventional media when dealing with
the public’s anger about the HST
and a misunderstanding about
the tax’s benefits when compared to the old PST.
Thompson examined all of
Vander Zalm’s arguments
against the HST in a research
paper called “HST or PST? The
truth about the HST and why
returning to the PST is better for
B.C.” Thompson checked and rechecked Vander Zalm’s assertions and his sources in much
the same way a high school
teacher might check and double-check a student’s work to ensure
they were quoting their sources
accurately and weren’t randomly
making things up.
Thompson found that Vander
Zalm’s report misquoted from
its sources, claimed that things
were said in expert reports and
newspapers that weren’t really
said at all, cherry-picked its sta-
tistics, misrepresents facts,
made assertions that its own
sources totally contradicted and
was filled with so many inaccur-
acies and half-truths that after
viewing Thompson’s 15-minute
video, one might think they
were being lied to. Vander Zalm
is even suggesting that the HST
is a step toward world govern-
ment and our sales tax rates will
be set in Brussels.
Tony Wilson is a franchise,
licensing and intellectual property
lawyer at Boughton Law Corpora-
tion in Vancouver and an adjunct
professor at Simon Fraser Univer-
sity. He is a regular business law
columnist with The Globe and
Mail and the author of Manage
Your Online Reputation, a book
that guides individuals and busi-
nesses on how to monitor and pro-
tect their personal and corporate
reputations on social media.
