Before the modern trend of plain English speaking, lawyers were well known for their use of complicated legal terms, antiquated phrases and Latin maxims.  Older judgments are sprinkled with terms such as, inter alia, “res ipsa loquitur”, “obiter dictum”, ratio decidendi”, “a priori” and “ab initio”. Presumably as a result of the Norman conquest of…

The downloading of material from the Internet has been a topical issue ever since the Internet came into widespread use. Readers may recall that initially the downloading controversy focused on music with recording artists up in arms about their work being freely available on the Internet. Most famously heavy metal supergroup Metallica sued the music…