SCALEplus Tutorial

SCALEplus Tutorial

SCALEplus is a legal database service run by the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department. It is hosted by the AGPS. SCALEplus contains Commonwealth, ACT, NT and South Australian legislation and case law. It also contains Tasmanian Supreme Court decisions, a database containing the commencement date of acts, and another on the status of legislation in parliament.

SCALEplus uses a commercial database package called "Topic" (produced by Verity Software). Topic is the basis of a number of Australian legal databases, notably SCALEplus, OSIRIS (the Industrial Relations Web Site) and FRLI (Federal Register of Legislative Instruments). What you learn here about the Topic query language you can use in the other databases as well (other features, such as browsing, may be different).

Exercise: For the purposes of this tutorial, we will be researching Commonwealth trade mark law. Specifically, we want to answer the question: "When does one infringe another’s trade mark?"

SCALEplus Home Page

Go to the SCALEplus home page (it can be found at http://law.agps.gov.au/). Select "Open" on your browser and then type in the URL.

When the page has loaded, you will see the SCALEplus home page. You can return to this page at any time by clicking on the link "Home Page" at the top of the every page.

Note the "Fast Search" section. You can type a word or phrase here to quickly search all databases on SCALEplus.

Further down, you will see "How to use this site", which contains links to a quick reference guide, and the user manual (available in RTF format, which can be read by most word processors).

Using the Fast Search

Let’s do a quick search on "trade marks". At the SCALEplus home page, go to the "Fast Search" section and click in the box labelled "Search For." Type in "trade marks" and press Enter.

SCALEplus has done a search for the phrase "trade marks." Over 5,000 documents should be found, but only the first 50 will be displayed.

Using your browsers scroll bar, move down to the case Moorgate Tobacco v Philip Morris (item 4).

Note the various parts of the hit list:

At the top of the page is the standard SCALEplus navigation bar. We will use this later;

Next SCALEplus tells you how many documents matched your query, as well as the total number of documents in the database (there are over a million!);

Each "hit" (ie a document that matches your search query) has

A score. This reflects the relevance of the document to your query. "1.00" is the highest and means "most relevant."
A database. This is the name of the database that the document was found in.
A size. The size of the document, in bytes.

The document title is displayed in bold. Underneath are the options "Show FIRST Hit" and "Show from Start". Select "Show FIRST Hit".
Note that our search term is displayed in bold, orange italics.
Use the scroll bar to go to the top of the document.

Browsing Databases

Doing a "fast search" returned far too many documents. However, since we know that we should start with the Trade Marks Act 1995 (Cth), we can use the SCALEplus Browse Databases feature to go straight to the act.

Select "Browse Databases" at the top of the page.

Click on "pasteacts". This is SCALEplus’s consolidated Commonwealth legislation database.

SCALEplus uses a "phone book" metaphor. Note that acts are grouped into alphabetical bands. Scroll down until you find the band that you think contains "Trade Marks Act"

Now scroll down until you find "Trade Marks Act 1995 No. 119 of 1995".

Note your options:

Search in this Act: Allows you to search for keywords or phrases in this act only.

Download this Act: Allows you to download the full text of the act in RTF format.

List of sections: Gives a table of contents for the act. Click this link now.

Scroll down to "Sect 20", which lists the rights of a trade mark holder. Reading s 20 we note that "infringement" is defined in Part 12.

Go back to the table of contents by clicking the "Back" button on your browser, and scroll down to Part 12. Click on the words "PART 12". The document returned is more or less empty. Why?

Click "Next Article"

We find the definition of infringement here, in s 120. Note the phrase "deceptively similar." We now want to know what "deceptively similar" means.

Quick Searching SCALEplus

Go to the top of the page and select "Quick Search".

SCALEplus supports zones. Zones are areas of a document that can be individually or jointly searched. You can limit your search to just the document name for example. Other zones include document author, court, judges’ name, etc). To search in a zone, we use the <IN> operator.

SCALEplus allows you to limit the databases you search in. For now, we will search only in the pasteact database.

Go to "New Databases". It lists all the SCALEplus areas we can search in. Check the box "pasteact."

Let’s say we want to search historical data as well. We’ll select all Commonwealth legislation by clicking that button. All the checkboxes are now marked.

Searching numbered acts and regs may be redundant. Uncheck these boxes by clicking on them.

When you are ready, press the "Set" button.

Now type "deceptively similar", limit your results list to 100 entries, and press "Search".
Whoa! That’s too many to just browse. We need to limit our search. Press the back button to redo the search.
Now click the "And" circle button (also known as a radio button) and type definition. Press "Search" again.
Note how Topic has formatted your query: (deceptively similar)<And>(definition). This is what a Topic query actually looks like. You can type this in yourself from the Advanced Search screen.
Scroll down until you find section 10 of the 1995 act. Read the section by selecting "Show from Start".
What was the previous definition of "deceptively similar"? (Hint: Historical data is included in our result list – go back to it).

Advanced Searching – Introducing the Topic Query Language

We discovered that the 1995 act did not change the definition of "deceptively similar." We can therefore search across case law databases for the judicial interpretation of the definition, without worrying about limiting it to the 1995 act.

When we did a "Quick Search", SCALEplus formatted our form into a Topic Query Expression. The expression is displayed at the top of the search results page. We can type Topic Query Expressions directly into SCALEplus, for more powerful searches.

Topic Query Expressions are made up of words, operators, and modifiers:

Words are keywords that we are interested in. We just type them any way we need, case does not matter, so "trade mark" is the same as "Trade Mark".

Operators describe the relationship that must exist between our words. The <And> operator means both words must appear together. The <Near> operator means both words must appear within 10 words of each other. Operators are written between angle brackets, <like so>.

Modifiers change the way the words are interpreted. We said before that case does not matter, so that "Trade Mark" is the same as "trade mark." We can use the <CASE> modifier to force a case-sensitive match.

Change the current searchable databases to the High Court and Federal Court decisions (see above).
Search for the meaning of "deceptively similar". (Hint: Use the formatted query that was displayed after our Quick Search above).
The case of Angove’s Pty Ltd v Elton Johnson is a well known trade marks case. Find it. (Hint: The case name is in the NAME zone, and the <IN> operator searches in a zone).

Additional References

The SCALEplus manual, available from the home page, is very complete. It covers fully the Topic Query Language, which contains many powerful operators not mentioned here.

OSIRIS is at http://indrel.agps.gov.au/

FRLI has not yet been released.