This course focuses on secured credit in lending, wholesale and retail sales transactions and touches upon related areas. Coverage includes a brief introduction to the law of sale of goods, insolvency, suretyships, and selected aspects of the law that govern securities transfers, mostly all in the context of secured credit. Most of the course will deal with the financing of commercial and consumer transactions, particularly secured credit under the Ontario Personal Property Security Act. The course will combine statutory interpretation and legal principles as they operate throughout commercial transactions.
Neither a prerequisite nor a co-requisite is required or recommended, and the course is appropriate for students who start their second year at Osgoode. Those who wish to take upper year business law courses are encouraged to take it quite early in their upper year law studies.
Copyright claims are ubiquitous, covering everything from angst-filled teenage poetry to impersonal, algorithmic recreations of a Rembrandt masterpiece; from commercially lucrative musical compositions and digital code, to (potentially) priceless vampire fan fiction. This course is designed to introduce students to the universe of rules, theories, policies and controversies that characterize the Canadian copyright system which regulates monopoly interests in musical, literary, dramatic and artistic works. The course will examine questions such as: What is a copyright? When does it vest? How long does it persist? Who can be an author? And, what are the relevant rights and obligations? We will consider the relationship between the private expectation of owning one’s own work, and the public need for knowledge and information, and evaluate the legal and para-legal mechanisms through which this tension is controlled if not resolved in the context of technologies, old and new.
The majority of the course readings will be drawn from statutory code and judicial decisions. However, since copyright law plays a substantive role in our understanding of ownership, creativity, and cooperation in society, this course will pay substantial attention to the social, moral/political and economic theories that underpin the legal regime. While most cases and readings will be focused on the Canadian legal system, we will, as relevant, consider notable divergences in, and alternatives offered by, other legal systems, particularly the UK and the US.
Students will be expected to have read the prescribed materials listed on the syllabus before coming to class; in-class lectures will be modest and the discussions will place substantial emphasis on collected review and problem solving rather than the more-traditional one-way lecture. Specifically, the in-person classroom meetings, twice a week, will be divided into: (i) 1-hr lectures that are designed to review the rules and theories covered in the readings, and (ii) 1-hr application oriented, case-study discussions that are designed to rehearse applying the rules and theories on hypothetical fact situations).
This course introduces the laws governing various forms of business associations in Canada. The course will cover sole proprietorships, general partnerships, limited partnerships, limited liability partnerships, franchises with a particular focus on business corporations. The course will canvass such topics as:
· what are, and when do you use, a sole proprietorship, agency, general partnership, limited partnership, limited liability partnership, professional corporations and franchises;
· the creation, organization and powers of the corporation;
· the capital structure and activities of the corporation;
· the management and control of the corporation;
· shareholder rights;
· the duties and responsibilities of shareholders, directors and officers;
· shareholder derivative actions and other remedies;
· introduction to corporate transactions;
· the liquidation and dissolution of the corporation; and
· Elements of Foreign Direct Investment (if time allows).