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Legal Dictionaries / Words & Phrases

Legal dictionaries and Words and Phrases can help you research the meaning of legal terms and the legal interpretation of legal words and phrases. This can help when you’re trying to interpret a statute for which there is no clear case law or if you’re trying to discern the meaning of a word in a key legal document, such as a contract or a will.

Legal Dictionaries

• Barron's Canadian Law Dictionary
  • Available via Lexis+ (law students only), the campus-wide version of Quicklaw (available to all students), and in print on the reference desk and in the reference section (available to all students)
• Dictionary of Canadian Law
  • Available in print on the reference desk (available to all students)
• Black's Law Dictionary (American)
  • Available via Westlaw Edge (law students only; click the International tab) and in print on the reference desk (available to all students)

Words & Phrases

• Words & Phrases Judicially Defined in Canadian Courts and Tribunals (Canadian Abridgment)
  • Available via Westlaw Edge (law students only and in print in the reference section (available to all students)
• Canadian Legal Words & Phrases
  • Available via Lexis+ (law students only) and the campus-wide version of Quicklaw (available to all students)
• Sanagan’s Encyclopedia of Words and Phrases
  • Available in print on the reference desk (available to all students)

Legal Encyclopedias

Legal encyclopedias contain narrative summaries of the law supported by references to case law and statutes. They are often the best place to start to gain a general understanding of the law in a particular area.

There are two main legal encyclopedias in law: the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest (CED) and Halsbury's Laws of Canada (Halsbury's). CED covers federal, western, and Ontario jurisdictions, and Halsbury's covers all provincial and federal jurisdictions. Both are available in print in the Law Library in the reference section on the first floor.

Electronically, CED is available in Westlaw Edge, while Halsbury's is available in Lexis+.

Canadian Encyclopedic Digest

• Available via Westlaw Edge (law students only) and in print in the reference section (available to all students)
• Helpful titles include:
  • Patents
  • Trade Marks and Industrial Designs
  • Copyright
  • Internet Law

Halsbury's Laws of Canada

• Available via Lexis+ (law students only), the campus-wide version of Quicklaw (available to all students), and in print in the reference section (available to all students)
• Helpful titles include:
  • Patents, Trade Secrets and Industrial Designs
  • Trademarks, Passing Off and Unfair Competition
  • Copyright
  • Technology and Internet

Journal Articles & Databases

If you already know the journal title, year, volume number and page number for an article, you may be able to access it electronically by searching for the journal's title in the UNB e-journals database. If we have the journal electronically or in print, it will be listed. You can also look up the journal title in UNB WorldCat.

Keep in mind that it can be best to start with an index rather than a full-text database. An index is essentially a list of articles by topic. Sometimes the article will be available full-text, but often you'll just be given a citation that you can use to track it down somewhere else.

Key Databases

• Index to Canadian Legal Literature
  • Available via Lexis+ (non-law UNB/STU use the campus-wide version of Quicklaw)
  • Available via Westlaw Edge (law students only)
• Index to Legal Periodicals & Books Full Text
• Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective
• LegalTrac
• Lexis+ (non-law students use the campus-wide version of Quicklaw)
  • Click Law Reviews & Journals
• Westlaw Edge (law students only)
  • Click Articles and Newsletters
• HeinOnline
  • Click Law Journal Library

If you need help locating an article, contact a librarian for assistance.

Books

To search for books at UNB Libraries, use UNB WorldCat. UNB WorldCat contains records of materials held at the Harriet Irving, Science and Forestry, Engineering, Hans W. Klohn, and Law libraries.

A few key texts:

• Canadian Patent Act Annotated, 2nd ed [2 vols.], by Robert H Barrigar & Andrew M Shaughnessy / LAW-RESERVE KF3115 .ZA2 C36 1994 and eBook.
• Fox on Canadian Law of Copyright and Industrial Designs, 4th ed, by John S McKeown / LAW-RESERVE KF2994 .F6 2003 and eBook via Westlaw Edge (law students only).
  • 5th edition available via ProView
• Hughes & Woodley on Patents, 2nd ed, by Roger T Hughes / LAW-RESERVE KF3110 .H84 2005 and eBook.
• Hughes on Copyright & Industrial Design, 2nd ed, by Roger T Hughes & Susan J Peacock / LAW-RESERVE KF2991.5 .H84 2005 and eBook.
• Hughes on Trade Marks, 2nd ed, by Roger T Hughes & Toni Polson Ashton / eBook only.
  • 1st ed available in print: LAW-RESERVE KF3178.4 .H84
• Intellectual Property Law: Copyright, Patents, Trade-Marks, 2nd ed, by David Vaver / LAW-RESERVE KF2979 .V38 2011 and eBook.

Legislation

The following databases and websites provide access legislation:

• Lexis+ (law students only)
  • Non-law students: use the campus-wide version of Quicklaw
• Westlaw Edge (law students only)
• CanLII
• Justice Laws (Government of Canada federal legislation)
• LEGISinfo (Parliament of Canada)
  • Includes information on federal bills, including status, speeches, links to Hansard debates, full-text versions of bills, and more from 35th Parl, 1st Sess (January 1994) to the current session

A few helpful statutes:

• Competition Act, RSC 1985, c C-34
• Copyright Act, RSC 1985, c C-42
• Industrial Design Act, RSC 1985, c I-9
• Patent Act, RSC 1985, c P-4
• Trademarks Act, RSC 1985, c T-13

Cases & Decisions

The following databases and websites provide access to case law:

• Lexis+ (law students only)
  • Non-law students: use the campus-wide version of Quicklaw
• Westlaw Edge (law students only)
• CanLII
• Supreme Court of Canada Cases
• Federal Court of Canada Cases
• Trademark Opposition Board Decisions
• Copyright Board Cases & Tariffs
• Decisions of the Commissioner of Patents
• Reports of Patent, Design and Trade Mark Cases (via Oxford University Press Journals Online)

Cases Digests

Along with searching the databases mentioned above, you should use a case digest to find case law. A case digest service indexes cases by topic, and each topic is broken down into several subtopics. With a case digest, you might find ten, twenty, or hundreds of cases on your research topic, saving you hours of time.

Two important case digests are the Canadian Abridgment Digests and the Canada Digest.

• Canadian Abridgment Digests
  • Available via Westlaw Edge (law students only) and in print in the reference section (available to all students)
  • Topics include: Intellectual Property
• Canada Digest
  • Available via Lexis+ and the campus-wide version of Quicklaw (available to all students)
  • Click Case Summaries > All Canada Digests for a list of topics
  • Topics include:
    • Copyright
    • Patents
    • Trade-marks
    • Information Technology

Government Documents

Government departments and agencies publish a great deal of important law-related information. The Law Library's collection of printed government documents is located on the library's third floor. Use UNB WorldCat to search, or ask a library staff member for help.

The Harriet Irving Library also has government documents, which can be located through UNB WorldCat.

For government documents that are available online, try using UNB Libraries' Google Custom Search.

Note: if you include site:canada.ca (and/or site:gc.ca) and filetype:pdf in a Google search, you will retrieve PDF documents from Government of Canada websites. This is a good way to find government reports, as they are usually in PDF format.

The following sites might be useful:

• Government of Canada Publications Search  
  • Federal search engine for government publications.
• Library of Parliament Research Publications  
  • Non-partisan, reliable, and timely information and analysis on current and emerging issues, legislation, and major public policy topics from the Library of Parliament.
• Canadian Intellectual Property Office  
  • Includes information on trademarks, patents, copyright, industrial designs, and more.
  • Canadian Trademarks Database
    • Contains all active and many inactive marks that were either applied for or registered pursuant to the current Trade-marks Act or former trademark legislation.
  • Canadian Patent Database
    • Contains bibliographic, text, and image data for Canadian patent documents filed or granted from 1920 to present.
  • Canadian Copyright Database
    • Includes all copyrights that have been registered since October 1, 1991, pursuant to the Copyright Act.
  • Canadian Industrial Designs Database
    • Contains information pertaining to all industrial designs registered in Canada since 1861.

Websites & Blogs

The following sites may be helpful for your research:

• Google Patents
  • Contains full-text patents from around the world.
• The Lens
  • Contains scholarly works, global patent records, and patent sequences.
• Intellectual Property Institute of Canada
  • The professional association of patent agents, trademark agents, and lawyers practicing in all areas of intellectual property law.
• CBA Intellectual Property Section
  • Deals with legal issues around ownership, licensing, transfer, and protection of intellectual property and related property rights.
  • List of committees
• World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
  • The global forum for intellectual property services, policy, information, and cooperation; a self-funding agency of the United Nations, with 193 member states.
  • Standing Committee on the Law of Patents
    • created in 1998 to serve as a forum to discuss issues, facilitate coordination and provide guidance concerning the progressive international development of patent law.
• United States Patent and Trademark Office
  • Patent Search
  • Patent Trial and Appeal Board
  • Trademark Search
  • Trademark Trial and Appeal Board
• United States Copyright Office
  • Copyright Search

There are many blogs maintained by lawyers and law firms, and you can find many of them at lawblogs.ca. There are several blogs listed in the intellectual property category that may be helpful, including Professor Norman Siebrasse's Sufficient Description: Observations on Canadian Patent Cases.