,
Beverley Moore and
Adrian Howard 
Copyright Decisions
Waldman v. ThomsonReuters Canada Limited, 2015 ONSC 3843
The Ontario Divisional Court has granted leave to appeal the decision refusing to approve the settlement of this class proceeding.
The proceeding relates to a copyright infringement claim against Thomson for copying briefs filed with the court and making them available to subscribers through its Litigator service. Thomson did not get permission to do this. According to the earlier decision (2014 ONSC 1288), the settlement agreement provided that Thomson will provide $350,000 for a cy-près trust fund to support public interest litigation. Thomson also agrees to make changes to the copyright notices on Litigator and to the terms of its contract with subscribers. The individual Class Members, who may opt-out, receive no monetary award under the Settlement Agreement, and they sign a release and grant a non-exclusive licence of their copyrights in the court documents to Thomson.
The leave to appeal was granted, with the Court stating there were six good reasons to doubt the correctness of the order, and the appeal raised issues of importance for the development of the law.
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