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

Reporting and management portfolio

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 storehouse of knowledge – our own 'intellectual property' – to a client's unique situation, including familiarity with specialized areas like computer technology, clean-tech, telecommunications, biotechnology, genetic engineering, biochemistry and pharmaceutics and the more traditional fields of mechanics, electricity, electronics and chemistry. We apply that expertise across the areas of patent, trade-mark and copyright.

Patents

Provided below is a list of our patent professionals and their applicable areas of expertise.

Trade-marks

Our Trade-mark Practice Group offers in-depth knowledge of Canadian trade-mark law and extensive experience in trade-mark prosecution. Our Trade-mark Practice Group includes experienced trade-mark lawyers and registered trade-mark agents who file and prosecute trade-mark applications in Canada. Our focus is on developing strategies to protect trade-marks and domain names in the context of overall branding and business imperatives. We go beyond the mere registration of trade-marks to ensure proper exploitation and enforcement of trade-mark rights in Canada and, in conjunction with our network of associates, throughout the world.

Copyrights

Our Technology & Intellectual Property Group includes lawyers with expertise in Canadian copyright law and extensive experience with all aspects thereof, including the acquisition, licensing and registration of copyright as well as anti-counterfeiting enforcement throughout Canada. As some of the most experienced in Canada in Copyright Board of Canada proceedings, our lawyers are very active before the Federal Court and the Copyright Board representing the "users" of copyrighted works in opposition to the proposed tariffs filed by various Canadian copyright collectives. We also advise clients with respect to Canadian copyright reform issues, international IP treaties as well as the IP related provisions of trade agreements and represent the views of our clients to the government departments responsible for the negotiation and implementation of those agreements and treaties.

Selected Experience

Publications

Patents

Trade-marks

Copyrights

Selected Experience

News

Publications

Events