Photo by Marvin Meyer ()

Shawn Dhue is an IPilogue Writer and a 2L JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School.

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As I searched for a topic for this blog post, I encountered a common theme: the Canadian technology sector is constantly asking for more action from the Canadian government aimed at fostering innovation in the community. Whether creating laws to help govern start-ups, eliminating laws to encourage innovation, or collaborating with other countries to combine resources, the sector alleges the Canadian government is missing vital opportunities to benefit Canadians.ĚýĚý

One of my most recent blog covered the intellectual property, technology, and energy platform points from the Liberal Party and Green Party. Many share the view that both of these parties, and in fact every party, lacked points in these areas. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government have been in the news for making announcements to help the “energy revolution” but failing to implement effective measures.

I have outlined below a few sectors which need innovation to expand. I hope to leave readers informed enough to form their own opinions on what government action is necessary and to pique their interest in what happens next and what other sectors need fixing.

Climate Change

The importance of climate change has become clear over the last decade and the issue played a major role in the most recent Federal election. Trying to cut down fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions, the Canadian innovation and technology sectors look to innovators to patent new, less wasteful creations.

In December 2020, the Government of Canada released a new climate plan: “.”. The plan states that Canada will exceed its 2030 Paris Agreement emissions reductions goals and lay a foundation for net-zero emissions by 2050. However, , an independent scientific analysis that tracks governments’ climate action plans, has deemed Canada’s plans to be “.”

To effectively combat climate change, Canada must invest more into innovation and intellectual property to create new jobs and effective methods of reducing emissions. Investment is necessary to become a leader of the “.” Put simply by : “.

The Pharmaceutical Sector

Another major global crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, has illustrated Canada’s strengths and weaknesses in the pharmaceutical industry. According to the : “.” In their , Canada earned a grading level of D in patents. This grade is reflected by Canada’s lack of investment into COVID-19 vaccine research. Prime Minister Trudeau even the lack of effort and vowed to make change.

In a recent article, and offer a solution to this issue for when the next global pandemic arrives: “.” Edwards and Morgan view the current Canadian policies as playing well politically but failing to drive innovative intellectual property in the pharmaceutical sector.

Research & Development (R&D)

Joel Bilt points out that Canada is the only G7 country “.” This decline is one of the instances where the community is asking the government to eliminate laws to allow the innovation sector to grow. Bilt writes: “.” Currently, most Canadian innovators are looking internationally to patent ideas, and . Positively, ideas are growing and more Canadian inventors need patents. However, a growing number of these inventors are not using the domestic patent system.

It is no secret that Canada’s R&D has experienced a in the last few decades. The question is what the country can do now, and in the future, to help the domestic R&D sector grow and expand. Whether by creating accessible paths to more patents, increasing education and funding, or an alternative route, it is up to the Government of Canada to act.

The post Current or Ongoing? An Interesting Trend in Intellectual Property News appeared first on IPOsgoode.

I spent this past summer interning with the (UNDP) in Jakarta, Indonesia. Preparing to take part in the new this coming fall gave me an opportunity to reflect on the intersection between IP issues and development work during my time in Southeast Asia.

At the start of my internship with the Access to Justice cluster, I immediately recognized that IP law, and anything connected to legal rights or issues in fact, only made up a negligible fragment of development concerns. There could be a number of explanations for this.

The first is that when we think about development issues, our initial thoughts relate to access to basic rights and services such as food, shelter, health, and security. This is where the roles of UNDP units such as the and the are most relevant. Then there’s the , which ensures that village land rights and sustainable communities will stay in place throughout the development process. It is typically only after each of these units has been thoroughly examined and detailed that the role of my unit, the , arrives. It is only then that development issues dare to approach the wide-scale, long-term objectives of development, such as organizing democratic elections, increasing female participation in the parliamentary process, and strengthening the capacity of local and provincial governments. And finally, in what appears to be a tiny corner of the unit, lies our Access to Justice cluster, working away at, among other things, enhancing legal awareness, access to legal information, and access to legal services. For example, the (LEAD) Project focuses heavily on educating local communities on legal issues, particularly on domestic violence and land rights, and providing avenues of recourse for legal grievances by setting up complaint posts or training paralegals.

Another explanation for why the law does not play a larger role is that Indonesia is a place where the law tends to be employed as the last resort. In many areas, particularly in some of the more rural provinces, communities prefer to find remedies for grievances from informal justice actors, such as village and religious leaders, rather than formal justice actors, such as the police or the courts. The UNDP in the Aceh province, for example, found it more meaningful to strengthen and clarify local “adat” justice customs and practices, in collaboration with formal justice actors, rather than focusing solely on increasing the role of the courts in these communities.

UNDP projects are primarily funded by donors. So, working on issues that can be easily sidelined in the face of more pressing development concerns means not simply that we must consistently explain to our donors why access to justice is important, but that we need to constantly reflect on and clarify to ourselves the goals of and meaning behind our work.

This, then, is my short pitch on why access to justice – and IP law – is integral to development programmes.

First, access to justice is closely linked to those “basic rights” identified in common development initiatives. A strong, current legal system can bolster and accelerate the development process, whereas a weak, outdated system can shackle it. For example, basic public services, including health and education, are provided by government agencies. If the quality of those services is not satisfactory, beneficiaries need to be able to recognize deficiencies, know how to find a remedy for them, and have the resources to obtain that remedy. Access to justice plays an essential role in each of those steps – increasing awareness of basic rights, educating communities on how to enforce those rights, and providing the means for them to do so. In fact, this scenario has become the launch pad for the development of an integrated public grievance redress mechanism by UNDP and the Government of Indonesia under the follow-up project to LEAD, Strengthening Access to Justice in Indonesia (SAJI). Therefore, a strong legal framework is critical to strengthening access to basic rights.

Intellectual property law can play an equally important part in the development process. The growing body of research over the last ten years suggests that strengthening and reforming intellectual property rights (IPR) is associated with accelerated industrial development, particularly through increased foreign direct investment and international technology transfer.[1] IPR reform also, however, has the opportunity to act as a key facilitator of the transition between the old and the new. Strengthening the IPR system is not merely central to ushering in new foreign investment but to protecting the commercialization of local and traditional products as well. For example, the is a non-profit programme that aims to market and commercialize the products of West Kalimantan indigenous weavers outside of Indonesia. In this scenario, IPR can be used both as an incentive to preserve Aboriginal crafts and culture and as a means of protecting those products during the commercialization process.Ěý Therefore, IPR can play a key role in protecting the old and welcoming the new during and throughout a country’s economic development.

Although copyright, trade-marks, patents, and industrial design all seem conceptually distant from development issues, it is important to keep them in the big picture policy framework of the development process. Access to justice – be it criminal, administrative, health, labour, or intellectual property – is critical to economic development because it should always be an aide, not a hindrance, to obtaining those basic rights and services.

In the IP blogosphere of patents cases, copyright legislation, and trade-marks registrations, I realize that this post may seem like an odd one. However, interning with the UNDP has helped me understand that, particularly in a world that increasingly demands specialized expertise, it is important to expand rather than restrict the immense potential that intellectual property rights have to shape the arena outside of law and in particular in the development world.

This post is dedicated to the committed staff – and my dear co-workers – of the Democratic Governance Unit of UNDP Indonesia. Your work changes lives!

The post Intellectual Property And Development: Closing The Conceptual Gap appeared first on IPOsgoode.