After two and half months at VL, I feel better prepared and more confident in my decision to pursue IP law.

Every day at VL was different.  For the most part, my role involved gathering and interpreting IP law information for entrepreneurs and VL staff.  To do this, I was often asked to meet one-on-one with entrepreneurs who each had a unique set of challenges and motives for seeking information on IP. Some entrepreneurs were well versed in the material, while others knew that IP protection was important but not why? Through this experience, I developed a greater understanding of the business reasons behind decisions on what IP to protect, when to move forward with registration/filing, and where.

My major project for the semester was organizing and speaking at an for entrepreneurs, co-sponsored by Miller Thomson, IP Osgoode, and VentureLAB.  The event was a success with full registration and an active and engaged audience.  Despite some nerves, I was grateful for the opportunity to practice my presentation skills to a large audience and to hear about the challenges faced by the 91��ɫ business community.

Of the many lessons I learned through the IP intensive, here are some of the amazing attributes of VL and why other students should consider seeking this opportunity:

Shockingly excellent client service

VL set an excellent example of what good customer service means. From day one, I felt a unique soul of the building and the people. The staff was friendly, passionate, and incredibly focused on supporting entrepreneurs regardless of the requests. For example, all staff documented and shared stories at team meetings of “shockingly excellent customer service”. This and other initiatives speak to the client-centred mindset of VL’s CEO Jeremy Laurin, Board of Directors, and staff.  I believe this experience will help me provide better client service, which is crucial in the legal profession.

Exposure to future innovations and technologies

Almost every day, I met or learned about a new technology or invention. Often, I would ask when can I buy one of these? Being exposed to future businesses and trends will help frame my future practice and allow me to better understand and meet the needs of different business sectors.

Entrepreneurial spirit

Everyone at VL has an innovative spirit that makes even the most conservative person wonder why he or she never pursued that idea, dream, or opportunity. I believe this type of thinking will help me approach the law and life with creativity, greater drive, and with less fear of failure.

One-on-one guidance from a legal mentor

Eugene Gierczak from Miller Thomson was my legal mentor for my placement. He met with me one-on-one to answer questions and to instruct me on different areas of IP law. While at school, it is rare to receive one-on-one training from a senior partner at a law firm.

Overall, my placement was an excellent experience.  I would encourage other students to consider the IP intensive and ventureLAB.

Amanda MacNaughton is a JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School and was enrolled in Osgoode’s .  As part of the program requirements, students were asked to write a reflective blog on their internship experience.

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Call for IPilogue Editors (Summer 2013)

Deadline: January 31, 2013

The IPilogue is the first blog of its kind populated with entries from student editors at Osgoode Hall Law School and other law schools across Canada and around the world, as well as postings from expert bloggers from across the globe. The IPIGRAM is our weekly e-digest of IPilogue content.

The blog contains comments and thoughts about current pressing intellectual property, technology, privacy and related legal issues and has a wide-ranging following in Canada and internationally from government, industry, academia and from other expert groups and members of the general public.

Many student posts have enabled greater employment opportunities for students, sparked informed debates on various issues, and led to publication in leading journals and a following in a number of law and policy forums.

IP Osgoode invites applications from law students, Osgoode and non-Osgoode alike, for the following summer positions:

Positions Available:

• IPilogue Editor
• IPilogue Contents Editor
• IPilogue Art Editor
• IPilogue Web Editor

Term: May 2013-August 2013, with a possibility to continue during the 2013-2014 academic year

for more information.

Call for Clinical Fellows (Summer 2013)

Deadline: January 31, 2013

IP Osgoode has partnered with the Ontario Centres of Excellence’s (OCE) Centre for Commercialization of Research (CCR) to create a unique intellectual property (IP) clinical program that will match Osgoode law students with OCE-supported companies. Students help under-resourced clients to secure and protect their IP en route to commercial success. The Clinic’s clientele reflect a diverse range of innovators drawn primarily from the information and communications technology (ICT), biotechnology, and green-technology sectors.

We are seeking law students to provide legal services to organizations that need assistance in their innovation and commercialization activities.

Positions Available: IP Osgoode / CCR Innovation Clinic Fellows

It is expected that the majority of the work done by students will relate to patent law. The remaining time would be spent working on other IP-related needs as they arise, (e.g. assistance with trade-mark, copyright, or trade secret issues). The students’ work during the placement may include:

• reviewing business transactions involving IP
• assisting with various steps in the patent prosecution process (conducting prior art searches, reviewing patent specifications)
• performing freedom-to-operate and clearance searches
• assisting with various steps in the trade-mark prosecution process
• conducting legal research

Term: May-August 2013, with a possibility to continue during the 2013-2014 academic year

for more information.

Call for IP Intensive Internships (Fall 2013)

Deadline: January 31, 2013 at 4:00pm

The is a unique program offered at Osgoode Hall Law School that gives students practical, experiential education in a workplace setting for an entire term in lieu of being in the classroom.

The Program begins with 2 weeks of lectures by experts prominent in the IP community. The lectures cover a wide variety of topics, from “ADR and Mediation in IP” to “Business and Economics of IP and Innovation”, from “Pharma and Biotech – R&D and Tech Transfer” to “Digital Media, Journalism and Freedom of Expression”. Students have heard from a Federal Court judge, the Chair of the Trade-marks Opposition Board, General Counsel of the Copyright Board of Canada, counsel from the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner’s Office, in-house counsel from a broad range of industries, practitioners, and of course, academics.

Then students participate in an 11-week internship. We have a wonderful array of placement partners from government agencies to music and media organizations to hi-tech companies and innovation centres. Throughout the term the students meet periodically to discuss topics relating to intellectual property law, to share their experiences in the work environment, and to participate in a cross-pollination of ideas. Students also maintain a reflective journal and blog on the IPilogue. They are also responsible to lead their own seminar presentations during the wrap-up week of the course.

Term: Fall 2013 (15 credits)

for more information. A list of all blogs relating to the IP Intensive Program, including blogs written by IP Intensive students about their experiences or as class assignments, is available .

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This past August, over 180 experts from 32 countries convened at the American University Washington College to discuss the growing importance of public interest in intellectual property (IP) law. When the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (the “Global Congress”) drew to a close, its members released the Washington Declaration on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (the “Declaration”), underscoring emerging public interest issues in IP and approaches to integrating them into international IP policy.

The Declaration’s recommendations are grounded in the growing concern that IP policy, though holding the potential to widely affect public interests, continues to be shaped predominantly by private ones. This is because IP policy discourse remains largely centred on the interests of rights holders, demonstrated by the European Union’s recently passed “Cliff’s law” directive that extended protection of sound recordings from 50 to 70 years. The Global Congress openly confronts this trend by exposing the ways IP rights can invasively affect public values such as freedom of expression, consumer protection, and privacy.

The Declaration emphasizes that, in moving forward, IP policy must incorporate public interest concerns by increasing transparency in the policy-shaping process, ensuring consultation with a range of stakeholders, and strengthening limitations and exceptions to IP rights. Some notable recommendations in the Declaration include:

• Supporting the use of open educational resources through government procurement policies for textbooks and other educational materials;
• Developing binding international agreements providing for mandatory minimum limitations and exceptions;
• Creating appropriate limits on the use of unfair contracts or technological protection measures that override limitations and exceptions;
• Ensuring that legal penalties, processes, and remedies are reasonable and proportional to the acts of infringement they target;
• Limiting the duties, rights, or abilities of Internet service providers to monitor or control the communications of their users;
• Ending patents based on discovery rather than invention (including patents on human DNA sequences and disease associations) and creating a more rigorous determination of inventiveness;
• Ensuring that inventions that result from publicly funded research are available for public use;
• Increasing public oversight and accountability of collective rights management organizations; and
• Requiring that current proposals for global copyright and patent reform fully integrate development concerns.

What the Declaration markedly reflects is a growing shift in view which recognizes that innovation and creativity are not merely nurtured by strong IP rights but by the cultural environment created by the public. Therefore, although IP rights are property rights in the sense that they are controlled by the rights holder, contemporary discourse must progressively consider the rights of the public at large to access and use that “property.” The Supreme Court of Canada has, for almost a decade since Théberge v. Galérie d’Art du Petit Champlain Inc., [2002] 2 S.C.R. 336, recognized that IP law ought to establish a balance between “the public interest in promoting the encouragement and dissemination of works of the arts and intellect and obtaining a just reward for the creator.” IP law and policy – and Canadian IP policy in particular – should be at the forefront of genuinely reflecting that balance.[1]

Having conceptually established the necessity of this balance, the important question the Declaration seeks to address is: how does the concept of promoting the public interest in IP take shape in practice? It is easy to immediately launch into debate over how the implementation of the Declaration will effectively uphold user rights or encroach on the interests of rights holders.  However, perhaps the most important take-away from this discussion – as summarized by the Global Congress at the end of the Declaration – is the need to channel more resources and greater efforts into studying the impact of IP policy. The greatest weakness of the debate is not the absence of strong theoretical arguments but that of strong evidence to point the debate in one direction over the other. Although most IP-focused research is conducted and funded by industry, these studies often fail to adequately document and publish details on their assumptions, methods, and data.[2]  In addition, almost no research has examined the economic value generated by limitations on or exceptions to IP protection.[3]

As was vocally conveyed by the Global Congress, beyond conceptual debates shaping IP policy, it is time for policy-makers to begin moving towards a form of evidence-based policy development.

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