Legal Research

Stikeman?s Tech & IP Blog

By Simon Fodden

I had occasion recently to take a look at Canadian Technology & IP Law, a blog put out by Stikeman Elliott. Their IP practice area page says the blog is new, but I was surprised to see that it’s been in existence since March of 2008: in all the time between then and now there have been a total of 40 posts, which is an average of something less than one entry every two weeks. There have been bursts of activity, from time to time; but dry spells have persisted as well, right up to the present: one post this March, one post this April, for example.

The posts are useful, if unexciting, and seem by and large to consist of a brief explication of recent legislative changes or court rulings. And, as though to acknowledge the straightforward, current awareness nature of the entries, nearly all are attributed to “Stikeman Elliott LLP,” rather than to any person.

The absence of a voice or voices together with the infrequent nature of the posting make for a weak blog, one that, I suppose, does no harm lying in your RSS aggregator or filtered into your IP Blogs email folder, but one that doesn’t seem worth the effort, either.

It’s not as though Stikeman’s doesn’t know how to do it. Compare this with their Canadian Securities Law Blog, which antedates the start of Slaw by a full year. There, although the posts are anonymous and curt factual updates, there are at least plenty of them, something like one or two each day, which makes it a useful stream, and one that clearly redounds to the firm’s credit.

Their Tech & IP blog needs to be goosed or given the hook, I’d say. There is something on the order of a dozen other Canadian blogs out there that deal with the general topic, so if the plan is to use the goose, in order to lay a golden egg part of that plan should be to take a hard look at what else is out there and see what it is that Stikeman’s talented IP and technology teams can uniquely offer.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on May 24, 2010 (boomark / email).