Michael John Crichton

The applicant, a plaintiff in a proposed class action in British Columbia, sought a declaration that a sealing order issued in a related Ontario proceeding did not apply to an affidavit he had obtained from the public court record before the sealing order was formalized.

The respondents had inadvertently included confidential information in a publicly filed motion record.

The court dismissed the application, holding that the sealing order applied to the inadvertently disclosed information and that confidentiality could be restored since the applicant had not yet used or relied upon the information.

The defendants brought a motion seeking a partial sealing order in respect of designated confidential information they wished to rely upon for a jurisdiction motion.

The confidential information related to the defendants' corporate organization and structure, web crawling and fetching processes, and model training and inference processes.

The court applied the three-part test from Sherman Estate v. Donovan and Sierra Club of Canada v. Canada (Minister of Finance) to determine whether to grant the sealing order.

The court found that disclosure of the confidential information posed a serious risk to the important public interest of fair competition in the artificial intelligence industry, that no reasonable alternative measures would prevent this risk, and that the benefits of the order outweighed its negative effects on the open court principle.

The partial sealing order was granted.

Following an appeal decision where the appellant was substantially successful, an issue arose regarding the costs of the underlying motion before the Associate Judge.

The appellant sought $18,000 for the motion costs, arguing the issue was inadvertently omitted from the appeal decision.

The respondents argued the parties' agreement on appeal costs encompassed the motion costs.

The court found the agreement did not cover the motion costs and, applying Rule 59.06(1), amended the order to award the appellant $18,000 for the costs of the motion below.

The plaintiff brought an action for copyright infringement against several foreign corporate entities, alleging their animated film infringed his copyright in a short film of the same name.

The Master stayed the action against six defendants for lack of jurisdiction but allowed it to proceed against three others.

On appeal, the Divisional Court found the Master erred by failing to consider the evidence and misapplying the test for carrying on business.

Applying the real and substantial connection test, the Court held that Ontario has jurisdiction over all defendants except two, as there was a good arguable case that the other defendants committed copyright infringement in Ontario or the claim was in respect of property in Ontario.

The defendants brought a motion for security for costs against the corporate plaintiff in a complex software copyright and breach of confidence action.

The court found good reason to believe the plaintiff had insufficient assets in Ontario to pay the defendants' costs if unsuccessful.

The plaintiff failed to establish impecuniosity or a good chance of success on the merits.

The court ordered the plaintiff to post $1,110,000 in security for costs, payable in three installments, to balance the defendants' need for protection with the risk of stifling the litigation.