Law
In law, references are documents or people providing witness to character. This connotation is also used in employment.
In patent law, a reference is a document that can be used to show the state of knowledge at a given time and that therefore may make a claimed invention obvious or anticipated. Examples of references are patents of any country, magazine articles, Ph.D. theses that are indexed and thus accessible to those interested in finding information about the subject matter, and to some extent Internet material that is similarly accessible.
In Canadian law, a reference question is a procedure through which the government can submit legal questions to the Supreme Court of Canada and provincial governments to the provincial courts of appeal.
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Famous quotes containing the word law:
“Judge—A law student who marks his own examination-papers.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“The law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against what is worse. By itself, the law can never create anything better.... Establishing respect for the law does not automatically ensure a better life for that, after all, is a job for people and not for laws and institutions.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“In our day the conventional element in literature is elaborately disguised by a law of copyright pretending that every work of art is an invention distinctive enough to be patented.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)