Intellectual Property

Every company has intellectual property (IP), whether it's a patent, a trade-mark, a secret formula, know-how, confidential information, a process for doing business, innovative software or business documents and graphics requiring protection. Our service offering is straightforward – to provide clients with the most qualified advice required for each particular IP matter.

We work with multi-national companies, as well as individual entrepreneurs, to protect their intellectual assets from the outset: a critically important strategy for the future. We offer advice in handling the complexities of IP issues from a legal and broad business perspective. This 'big picture' approach has become, for many companies, their most valuable and volatile resource and involves providing the traditional IP services - obtaining patent, trade-mark and copyright registrations; IP licensing; acting on behalf of clients in litigation to protect IP rights from infringement; due diligence in M&A and commercial transactions – along with additional strategic advice on issues such as when to protect a product or service through confidentiality instead of through patents and how to develop a family of trade-marks. Basically, we work with clients to maximize the value derived from their IP.

We provide strategic counsel in the following areas:

• Prosecution of all types of intellectual property applications
• Due diligence, licensing and sale of IP assets
• IP portfolio management and reporting
• Registration and management of domain names
• Branding and product development advice
• Recordal of security interests
• IP audits
• Development of IP policies
• All types of IP opinions
• IP litigation before Courts and administrative tribunals
• IP enforcement and anti-counterfeiting

Many of our lawyers, patent and trade-mark agents have earned Ph.Ds, M.Scs and P.Eng certifications. This allows us to bring a vast storehouse of knowledge – our own 'intellectual property' – to a client's unique situation, including familiarity with specialized areas like computer technology, telecommunications, biotechnology, genetic engineering, biochemistry and pharmaceutics and the more traditional fields of mechanics, electricity, electronics and chemistry.

Selected Experience

• Eli Lilly & Company v 8PM Chemist Ltd [2008] FSR 11 & [2008] FSR 12
• CMAC Mortgages Ltd. v. Canadian Mortgage Expert Centres Ltd., [2008] F.C.J. No. 27

News

• Fasken Martineau Stringer Saul in the Court of Appeal
• Roger Kuypers featured in BC Business magazine

Publications

• Your Questions Answered: Intellectual Property By: Mark D. Penner, July 2008.
• Amendments to the Copyright Act By: Gerald (Jay) Kerr-Wilson, Intellectual Property and Communications Law Bulletin, June 2008.

Events

• The Design Process and Intellectual Property: A Strategic and Tactical Guide, March 4, 2008.
• Strategic Intellectual Property 301: Effective Branding & Brand Creation, January 24, 2008.