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Meena Alnajar is an IPilogue Writer, IP Innovation Clinic Fellow, and a 2L JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School.

On Wednesday, March 9, I attended the “Breaking the Bias in IP: Reflections from Women in Leadership” held by ChIPs’ Toronto chapter. is a global not-for-profit organization dedicated to showcasing women in leadership positions in intellectual property and technology careers. ChIPs’ is to advance and connect women in technology, law, and policy. They aim to through diversity of thought, participation, and engagement. The organization currently has over members in Canada, the United States, and Europe. ; still, it is important to understand the lived experiences of women-identifying professionals in this area of law in order to bring about change and awareness to this issue.

This event was structured as a question-and-answer panel, with some questions from the hosts and some from the 90+ audience participants on Zoom. The panelists were three women in the intellectual property and technology fields: Sheema Khan, a patent agent currently working at Kinaxis and previously at Stratford Managers Corporation; Judith Robinson, a senior consultant with Fineberg Ramamoorthy LLP focusing on patent litigation; and Alexandria Daoud, a patent agent and vice president of intellectual property and regulatory affairs at Anyon Systems Inc. The event was opened and closed by Daphne Lainson, a partner and chair of Smart & Biggar LLP, and moderated by Beverley Moore, the national leader of BLG’s intellectual property litigation group. It was inspiring to see women from diverse career paths, as not all started as IP professionals or were even sure of entering the IP space.

The Pool Problem

A common concern regarding diversity in many career fields is ‘the pool problem’. Companies put forth that they have a limited number of qualified applicants who are diverse and this drives to disparities in the workplace, as opposed to peoples’ internal biases. The pool problem has especially grown in intellectual property and technology law, with one study reporting that of patent attorneys and agents are women. The pool problem starts early, with less women than men enrolling in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics () programs for their bachelor’s degrees. While the pool problem persists, the panelists shared experiences and advice that demonstrate that the pool problem does not have to allow gender disparities to persist in the IP space.

Supporting Women in IP

Each panelist provided not only words of encouragement for women in IP, but also words of action and change. The participants were encouraged to look beyond the statistics and actually ask about women in the workplace. They suggested participants observe who is the project leader, who clients are asking for, and recommend women for these spaces where they are not considered. For instance, where a project consists of an all-men team, despite there being qualified women for the job, one can ask why women were not considered or excluded and encourage that change if possible. Similarly, they can let clients know that there are qualified women to take on their files. There are existing initiatives that encourage firms to create reference sheets for clients consisting of leading women lawyers in certain sectors, like the program.

Implementable Changes

Allyship and authenticity were two recurring themes for change at this event. Allyship should manifest in both mentorship programs, but also through colleague support such as having men in the office join committees that ensure women’s fair treatment in IP workspaces. The workplace should also welcome authenticity, in the sense that it should acknowledge women’s roles beyond billable hours, including their contribution to fostering committees within the workplace. These elements can help create positive work environments that encourage more women to follow IP careers.

Organizations like ChIPs demonstrate that women in IP can be leaders and successful, all while being themselves. Events such as Breaking the Bias are safe spaces to have these difficult, but real conversations about IP’s gender disparity, and attendees can learn implementable changes that can ameliorate this disparity in the future.

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Meena Alnajar is an IPilogue Writer, IP Innovation Clinic Fellow, and a 2L JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School.

2021 was a big year for innovation and small businesses—venture capital (“VC”) funding reached an all-time high with higher funding in the US than the total raised in 2020. are investors who provide funds to small businesses and start-ups that exhibit exceptional growth potential based on market studies. In return, investors get equity in the company and may have a say in future decisions. It is an increasingly and fast way to fund new businesses. Yet despite this growth, women-founded companies receive just a small cut of this large investment. In particular, women-founded companies earned only percent of the . What stands between women’s ideas and the capital that helps them flourish? Industry barriers and sociocultural changes may provide some answers.

With unemployment on the rise, several studies find women are disproportionately affected by industry setbacks. A study found that women were 1.8 times more vulnerable to lose work than men in the pandemic, which may have made investors nervous to fund many women-led businesses this year. Beyond the pandemic context, some attitudes within the VC industry that may also drive the disparity between men and women’s VC funding.

In the industry, gender stereotypes not only create a barrier to hiring women in the start-up space, but also seek to discredit a woman’s value when pursuing certain ventures. For instance, , CEO and Co-Founder of the venture-backed tech company Vivoom, noted that “Male VCs … are very comfortable now giving female entrepreneurs capital for ”, like the stereotypical household and baby products, but hesitate to fund cutting-edge software and technology founded by women. While women are now welcome in the venture space, there seems to be only certain rooms they can enter if they want to be well-funded by male VCs. Those in control of the funds seemingly control the gender disparity in VC funding of certain companies. Could the solution to the disparity be to encourage more women to act as investors?

The disparity in funding women-led ventures could stem from the fact that women make up only 6.3% of investors, based on . However, simply including more women as investors is unlikely to alleviate the disparity observed in VC funding. Women-identifying investors face problems when attempting to back ventures. Since women also experience gender disparity in business leadership, women who are investors are less likely to have been . Entrepreneurs to accept money from (and relinquish equity to) investors without this experience. The proportion of women as venture capitalists is not the only issue; how women venture capitalists are perceived by entrepreneurs is also problematic. On the surface, women-identifying VCs have investment success rates than men. Upon further examination, this performance difference is venture selection, but rather the VC firm’s features such as . Selecting women-identifying investors is not a proven solution to alleviating gender disparity. However, co-workers and entrepreneurs supporting women investors in their work environments can further women-led VC success.

The gender disparity affects several stages of the VC pipeline, from investor disparities to the lack of women-led VC in prominent sectors like tech. To close this gap, business institutes recommend of a small business. For example, if a start-up classifies itself as a social impact venture, investors should utilize the peer-assessment model instead of estimating capital flow to determine the “investability” of that venture. In addition, having positions may overcome stereotypes and biases from investors by providing evidence that women can lead successful businesses.

The gender disparity not only hinders women-led VC potential but also dismisses women-led VC’s success in the market. found that women-led start-ups can deliver high revenues, nearly twice the amount of every dollar invested. Further, women-led businesses are to employ women and their businesses are more likely to focus on and employee relationships. When you invest in women, it propagates into more opportunities for women and positive contributions to societal issues like labour relations. Limiting women’s access to funding could deprive us from innovative ideas and employment opportunities. Women have been driving exceptional businesses in the last decade and can continue to do so with greater investment. VCs should therefore consider looking beyond stereotypes and invest in women, to invest in better futures.

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Meena Alnajar is an��IPilogue��Writer, IP Innovation Clinic Fellow,��and a 2L JD Candidate at��Osgoode��Hall Law School

On October 12, 2021, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) held its of the series “Closing the Gender Gap in IP,” titled “Looking at Good Practices.” This part of the series looks to the existing policy changes that, according to the session’s moderator Aurora Diaz-Rato Revuelta, a UN ambassador for Spain, will “trace the path to be followed.” WIPO had a commendably diverse group of panelists. Four speakers from Mexico, Oman, Uganda, and the UK provided their insights and initiatives to close the gender gap in IP.

The first speaker, Anel Valencia Carmona, is the Deputy Director General for Support Services for IMPI, the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property. This organization aims to increase women’s role in innovation and entrepreneurship. Interestingly, when her group attempted to assess the gender gap using patent data, they initially found no way to identify if a man or a woman wrote a patent. The group thus implemented a gender-identifying number which patentees can add to their application if they choose to participate in gathering data on women in IP. Prior to the gender identifier, any applicant without a gender-specific name was considered a man. The that from 2014-2018, men filed 62.5% of patent applications, 31.4% of applications involved both genders or were gender neutral, and women filed 6.2%. The project had two main goals: enhancing women’s visibility in the IP space and providing women the information to help them innovate. The team put on weekly podcasts to spotlight women inventors and held sessions with outside experts to help women with IP processes. In creating network opportunities for women in IP, the hope is that entrepreneurial women will be emerged in IP for years to come.

The second speaker, Thuraya Saud Al-Alawi, is the head of the intellectual property section and innovation and technology transfer center at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman. Ms. Al-Alawi also spoke to the barriers in Oman as women are still in IP in the country. IP was initially not accessible in Oman. The IP office, located in the country’s capital Muscat, required paper applications. The distance to the IP office and the physical requirements only further discouraged people from filing. However, Oman has recently implemented an electronic patent system set to fees by up to 90%. The University has also collaborated with WIPO to set up efforts to incubate women’s ideas and help explain IP policy by setting up a ‘summer school’ program. The hope is to enhance women’s IP knowledge and accessibility to registration to close the gender gap.

The third speaker, Ms. Mubiru Lilian Nantume, is the Founder of Grooming a Successful Woman with Intellectual Mind , a Ugandan NGO to empower women in the community to create a business and utilize IP to commercialize their products. The perception of women’s roles in remote communities is belonging ‘in the kitchen.’ This mindset is a significant barrier to women’s participation in innovation. GSWIM works with women in the community, finding out their interests and passions, then giving them a small amount of capital to help them grow their business ideas. GSWIM equips women with knowledge regarding product development, branding, and IP. The organization further empowers women with business sense by giving them capital and hosting product expos for them to display their work. This grassroots initiative demonstrates how we can collaborate to help all women participate in IP, including those living in remote and metropolitan communities.��

The final speaker, Andrea Brewster, is the lead executive officer of , a volunteer group of UK-based IP professionals. Ms. Brewster emphasizes that inclusivity is crucial, as it will “facilitate and sustain diversity.” Hence, it is essential to have professionals that are willing to grow their networks and practices to involve women. IP Inclusive has several members and hosts joint events across communities. They have a for business leaders to commit to championing diversity and inclusion. IP Inclusive wishes to focus less on the symptoms of gender disparity, like the pay gap and societal perceptions and targets the underlying causes such as lack of inclusivity and insufficient allyship in the profession.

The commonalities between the panelists included mentorship, encouragement, and accessibility in their communities as methods for encouraging women in IP. With WIPO continuing the series in 2022, the hope is to improve the statistics and perhaps see these initiatives implemented on a larger scale.

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Meena Alnajar is an IPilogue Writer, IP Innovation Clinic Fellow, and a 2L JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School.

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On July 7, 2021, I attended the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) second session of their three-part series, “Closing the Gender Gap in IP” titled “Exploring Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives”. The series aims to encourage greater participation by women in the innovation ecosystem. In 2020, women filed . While this number marks an increase in PCT patent filings by women , the percentage rose only from over fifteen years despite of research in the life sciences while in university positions. WIPO recognizes that the gender gap is multi-faceted, stemming from intertwining economic, educational, and informational barriers.

Sarah Callegari, WIPO’s Gender and Diversity Specialist, began the event by outlining the current data on the gender gap in IP. Callegari explained that while we have gender-stratified information on PCT patent filings, the same cannot be said for trademarks or other forms of IP. Missing data is attributed to a lack of transparency, which gender-sensitive technology can help to resolve. The worldwide gender-name dictionary generated the current pattern by disaggregating inventors’ names by gender. Callegari recommends that other IP offices utilize this dictionary to obtain further gender-stratified data in trademarks and other IP filings. WIPO estimates that if the gender disparity in IP is left alone, gender parity in patent filings will not be achieved for another 40 years.

On a similar note, gender-sensitive technology can also construct barriers for women. , CEO and founder of Women at the Table, is a coalition builder. She is currently heading the A+ Alliance for Inclusive Algorithms. Unconscious bias perpetuates gender disparity in technology and innovation spaces. These biases spill over into the artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithm space. Callegari recommended unconscious bias sensitivity training. However, unconscious bias invades algorithms uncontrollably. In 2018, was found to from all-women colleges and resumes with the word “women’s” in them when vetting for ideal candidates. In effect, Amazon’s recruitment system was revealing and reinforcing gender disparity in technical fields. Kraft-Buchman suggested that partnerships between women and tech creators are essential in controlling gender bias in data sets. Tech companies need to recruit women, especially for designing AI algorithms, even if they are not tech experts, to show companies how to train algorithms to remove implicit biases and promote women’s presence in the fields of IP and technology.

was the final speaker at the event. Fechner is a partner at Covington and Burling LLP and the Executive Director of the Invent Together coalition. Multistakeholder initiatives are key because they provide opportunities for women to invent and have their input valued and included. Studies have demonstrated that . The environment in which an individual grows up, therefore, plays a significant role in promoting innovation. Fechner suggests that the idea of inventing together is critical in expanding the innovation ecosystem to include more women. She highlights universities as key partners in promoting the initiative. However, an ongoing problem is that universities are limited in patenting activity. Universities do not value patenting as much as publication when granting tenure positions to professors. Thus, women academics are disincentivized to patent if they plan to further their academic career through tenure. While it may be simple to ask universities to promote women’s presence in the innovation space, systemic barriers within academia would still discourage women from focusing on their IP. These large-scale problems require large-scale solutions, such as legislative change. The has been proposed to allow the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to collect demographic data to precisely measure the and to incorporate the data into future national strategies dedicated to closing the gender gap in IP.

WIPO’s event underscores the gaps not only among genders in IP, but in our understanding of the extent to which gender disparities pervade IP and technology. Turning to multi-stakeholder initiatives means building coalitions to encourage women’s participation in innovation and remove the implicit biases that sustain the gender gap. As WIPO’s Deputy-Director General Lisa Jorgenson stated during the event, we are “missing out on a vast capital of ingenuity and creativity” if we maintain the gender gap at its current rate.

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, the United Kingdom (UK) communications regulator, topical data on digital downloads that violate copyright regulation. This study, based on market research with a sample of over 5,000 individuals, is an expansive and reliable glimpse into the downloading habits of internet users. The key findings are:

• One in six (17%) UK internet users over the age of 12 downloaded at least one piece of illegal content over the three month monitoring period
• 4% downloaded exclusively illegal content
• The top 10% of infringers were responsible for 79% of all illegal downloads
• Men are more likely to download illegal content than women
• Those under 34 years of age are more likely to download than those 34 and older
• Movies were illegally downloaded more than any other type of content
• uTorrent was the most common platform used for illegal downloads
  
  

Context and Methodology Analysis

To provide some context, these overall rates are lower than some of the hype would have us believe. As someone who has been following illegal downloading trends since the inception of the technology, I was surprised and delighted that fewer than one in five people download illegal content.

But it's not all good news. The age bias could indicate a darker hypothesis that I've held for many years - that the more technical capability individuals have, the more likely those individuals are to download illegally. Torrenting or competing methods require a sophisticated knowledge of the internet that is statistically less likely to be held by older users. It's possible that baby boomers are purchasing their movies on iTunes simply for the ease-of-use and straightforwardness of the service. Unfortunately, this hypothesis is immensely difficult to prove. As a former market researcher, I'm cognizant of the response bias that surveyed populations have when it comes to answering questions about their propensity to participate in illegal activity. Regardless of how solidly the questions were drafted, people would under-report their likeliness to illegally download copyright protected material.

This is the brilliance of the methodology employed in the Ofcom study; monitoring actual behaviour rather than asking participants to report behaviour leads to greater accuracy. The study is also methodologically sound because it has a large sample size, and a sample size recruited in multiple different ways.

It also goes above and beyond traditional polling techniques in one other important way. Eighteen years and older is a common way to begin a population sample; however, as this study confirms in its decision to include participants as young as 12 years old, practical internet studies should include teens and pre-teens in order to be as accurate as possible. Teens use the internet extensively - both while mobile and at home - and so they should rightly be included to assess internet usage behaviour by the population as a whole.

One caveat to the sample, and perhaps an obvious one, is the regional bias. The sample is entirely drawn from the UK and as such, the data is only truly representative of that area of the world. While this data may also be directionally representative for Anglophone Western countries with similar internet penetration rates, it would not be a useful reference when looking at many other countries and regions around the world.

Conclusion

Ofcom's work is incredibly important here. There is simply no replacement for reliable, open, and accessible data. Moreover, this study is ongoing, which provides valuable benchmarking and trend tracking. For Canadians reviewing the research, this study raises the natural question: what exactly is the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) doing research-wise? The answer may surprise you. They do, in fact, provide some statistical information regarding .

But they can do more, and they can do it better. Canada deserves a high-calibre, internet-usage think-tank akin to the United States' . Up until now I've always envisioned it to be executed by StatsCan, but perhaps the CRTC is a better fit to take on and drive this project. Canadians need more accurate data collection about our internet penetration, usage, and most importantly, the way it is impacting our daily lives.

Ultimately, in my opinion, the important question isn't how many Canadians are downloading illegal material. The core question is: are we trending toward more or fewer illegal downloads? And if we are trending upward, such a finding is a fundamental starting point to launching a much-needed national debate on piracy in Canada.

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Our very own Osgoode professors and feminist scholars, and presented a thought-provoking keynote entitled,��“Copyright and the Moral Arts of Appropriation: Feminist and Postcolonial Perspectives”, at the Conference hosted by the of the University of Toronto on November 11, 2011. Linking the overarching conference themes of how appropriation affects different feminisms to the intellectual property rights of postcolonial societies, the presentation provided an intriguing insight into the conflicted worlds of economic rights, technology, knowledge-sharing and cultural preservation.

Speaking on the ideas developed in their paper “” (co-authored with Joseph Turcotte), both Professors Coombe and Craig explored the concept of digital appropriation with respect to developing societies, especially highlighting the impacts of the economics-based property rights management model of the contemporary global intellectual property regime on local communities. The concept of the ‘cultural commons’ here, they argued, was being eroded by the narrow application of intellectual property rights, which confined ownership to one or a few, effectively reducing the scope of societal development by the exclusion of crucial perspectives, especially those of women.

While Craig proposed that the WWW and emerging technologies could be used to enable the public to contribute to the creation of more egalitarian intellectual property rights, Coombe suggested that the very idea of ‘public’ needed an overhaul to include diverse voices, as the term was historically entrenched in gender and social inequalities. Both authors concluded that that “a more inclusive notion of stewardship” is necessary, and that intellectual property rights will only work favorably in postcolonial societies if they work symbiotically, not parasitically, with the communities they wish to benefit from.

Professor Coombe’s approach further involved a critique of North American public domain policies as “too individualistic with their emphasis on public freedoms,” and cited the incompatibility of intellectual property rights derived from these ideas with postcolonial societies. Intellectual property, she said, was more of an enclosure to these societies, and because of this, the notion of the ‘public domain’ itself became “a modern bourgeois term,” that restricted cultural development instead of freeing cultures. According to Coombe, current intellectual property concepts only supported the continued dispossession of local communities, effectively becoming a tool for recolonization. Citing the role of women in farming communities in the developing world, Coombe emphasized the importance of vernacular property rights, including knowledge of land use and agriculture that was passed down orally, “through networks of women’s trust.”

She also argued that with moves such as the patenting of seeds, or preventing cross-breeding of seeds, intellectual property rights were doing more than just preventing innovation in agricultural development— they were denying communities the means to propagate their own intangible wealth of social history, effectively debilitating the already-damaged fabric of postcolonial societies. The answer, according to Coombe, is to broaden the existing perception of private goods and the public domain, and to ensure that intellectual property rights are not just involved in protecting tangible expression, but that a novel “postcolonial ethic of stewardship” can give the intangible contribution of distinctive groups their due.

Professor Craig also drew on a relational theory of copyright law and suggested that, in order to be legitimate, a system of copyright must provide access to various cultural landscapes and must be modified to create spaces where the process of authorship enables “ongoing social dialogue as part of cultural conversation, which then helps shape communities.” The current practice of using copyright law to put forward proprietary claims is a form of Lockean possessive individualism, argued Craig, and only propagates the marginalization of the same groups that have suffered due to exclusion historically. This effectively creates the same problems in intellectual property rights as faced by real property management regimes, because copyright law "wants to believe that expression is created in a vacuum," rather than being a complex interplay of various influences. The solution, according to Craig, lies in open-access initiatives like the (A2K) movement, which is built on collaborative knowledge sharing across cultures. Craig also pointed out that feminism and open-access complemented each other perfectly, since both were concerned with “prioritizing the marginalized and countering private appropriation,” and were “optimistic about technology’s capacity to destabilize the existing power structure.”

Tied into one of the conference’s main concerns of how appropriation could be used in a positive context, the keynote focused on advocating for a more nuanced approach that preserved the uniqueness of postcolonial societies and the “need to protect the ‘we’ with more humility.” It provided a worthy segue into the conference’s second and final day, where many of the questions raised by Professors Coombe and Craig were discussed and debated, and created the background for further dialogue on feminism and the politics of appropriation.

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On 6 November 2009, IP Osgoode and the Institute for Feminist Legal Studies jointly organized the second annual . Gowlings Lafleur Henderson LLP hosted the event at their downtown Toronto office. Speakers were organized into three panels: Private Practice, Industry and Government, and Gender Issues in Intellectual Property. The event featured presentations by scholars researching gender and intellectual property issues. Speakers were also invited from various areas of IP practice to reflect on the opportunities and challenges in the field and in the practice of law and policy-making. The focus of the discussions was whether women in IP faced greater barriers than women in the practice of law generally. You can find coverage of the first annual women and IP roundtable by Anna Shahid by clicking .

The event was co-chaired by Professor Giuseppina D’Agostino and Professor Mary Jane Mossman (both of Osgoode Hall Law School). ��This year the roundtable presenters consisted of, Professor Fiona Kay (Sociology Department, Queen’s University), Ariadni Athanassiadis (MBM LLP), Heather Lawrence (Member of Chambers of Michael Silverleaf QC), Virginia Jones (Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association), Barbara Motzney (Department of Canadian Heritage), Professor Carys Craig (Osgoode Hall Law School), Professor Bita Amani (Faculty of Law, Queen’s University), Professor Laura Murray (English Department, Queen’s University), and Professor David Vaver (Osgoode Hall Law School).

Keynote

Fiona Kay, a sociology professor at Queen’s University, delivered the keynote address. Widely recognized for publishing extensively on issues surrounding gender and the legal profession, she notes that although trends suggest that gender imbalance is becoming less apparent, it would be wrong to say that the issue has been remedied entirely. She offers some sobering statistics on females in the legal profession citing the proverbial glass-ceiling. While female law students constitute close to if not more than 50% of law school enrolment numbers, women are more likely to be found in less money-making and less prestigious legal settings than men. Several perspectives exist to explain these numbers and are broadly classified into resource (supply-side) factors and demand-side factors. The supply factors include the persistent gender stereotypes held by employers; that women possess less ‘cognitive traits.’ Consequently women are often not granted the same presumption of competence. Also, because women often bear family and household responsibilities, they are unable to put in the long hours that men can and are often relegated to the ‘mommy-track’. The demand-side factors are commonly explained by cultural reasons: networking and client contact is a more important consideration for hiring, retaining and promoting male candidates (conversely, academic performance is a more important variable for female candidates).

She also cited that 9% of women would leave private practice within 16 months and 55% would leave within 4.5 years. “Flight from law” is a notable issue and she states that while alternative work schedules exist, these arrangements are far from being institutional policy. Flexibility is advocated by the various Bar Associations but it is still largely up to the individual to seek alternative arrangements from employers. Professor Kay did offer some encouraging findings however. She states that women are more often satisfied with the practice of law itself than their male counterparts and that while barriers persist, so do growing enhancements of gender equality in the profession.

Panel One

In the first panel, two practitioners in private practice shared their personal experiences working in intellectual property. Their experiences in some measure mirror the findings of the keynote speaker. A partner at MBM LLP in Ottawa, Ariadni Athanassiadis cites that once women hit forty they disappear from the practice of law. However, she emphasizes the strength of having female and male colleagues on her team and how client-interactions can be enhanced by having both genders represented. She also takes note of her firm’s clear articulation that women are an asset and further states that lawyers who are working mothers are among the most efficient she knows, and are appreciated as such.

Heather Lawrence, a barrister with the Chambers of Michael Silverleaf QC in London England, brought a unique perspective on gender imbalance in the context of a predominantly male judiciary. She cites that it is not uncommon for female counsel to be treated with hostility. She suggests that gender imbalance in the intellectual property world is not likely to be any more pervasive than the legal world generally, and lists three broad factors relating to how people choose an IP lawyer: 1. Someone you think will do a good job, 2. Someone you think the client will be impressed by, and 3. Someone you will enjoy working with. As these criterions are value judgements, there is the potential for bias and gender issues. She recalls that witnesses are often relieved to see her step up to the bench on cross-examinations because of her gender and she supposes that the perception of lawyers and clients likely mirror that of witnesses. Heather Lawrence remains optimistic however and believes that cultural and attitude changes are key. She further believes that the Bar is best positioned to initiate these changes.

Panel Two

Both speakers in the next panel, with successful careers in the industry and government, were impressed that there was a strong female presence in all the legal counsel positions they had interactions with. Virginia Jones, Director of Policy and Legal Affairs at the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association, stated that it is unsettling if she does not see her female peers – she also recognizes that when external legal counsel is sought, it should be the responsibility of women working in-house to seek a gender-balanced team. She also questions the requirement for some IP practitioners to have a scientific background, suggesting that having an advanced degree may instead impede one’s ability to translate complex science into simpler, more digestible material for a deciding judge to understand in court.

Barbara Motzney, Director General with the Department of Canadian Heritage, emphasizes that working in IP and policy requires a multidisciplinary team. She also states that the government’s commitment to gender issues is defined in the Charter and directed further by various Federal Action Plans and international agreements. Barbara Motzney also emphasises the importance of communication. As a non-lawyer working with lawyers, she notes how important it is to deliver plain, easy-to-understand and quickly communicable documents.

Panel Three

The final panel discussed academic gender issues in intellectual property.�� One slide in particular elaborates on the double glass-ceiling:

If science is culture- that culture is male,

Where law is artefact, it too is of a primarily male dominated culture,

Women are demoted in the story of creation.

Law Professor at Queen’s University, Bita Amani detailed her work on traditional knowledge and how IP has an alienating affect on the kinds of content it attaches exclusivity to. More specifically she states that because non-narrative knowledge such as folklore or traditional knowledge is treated as public domain, it is held to be not deserving of protection. She also discusses the role of universities and challenges how academics focus on black letter law sometimes to the detriment of exploring “fringe” topics and engaging students in a critical manner. She elaborates that cultural studies help us analyse IP in a multidisciplinary way; rather than solely relying on economic rationales such as the utilitarian view that patents encourage disclosure and defeat the free-rider effect.

English Professor at Queen’s University, Laura Murray, discussed her recent experience with the Facebook Page called , where she discovered that women are underrepresented in the dialogue on copyright reform in Canada. She discovered that although 34% of IP academics in Canada are women, only 11 % of the discussion posts were from women. During her presentation, she highlighted the masculine and generational tones to copyright movements today: whether it is on the Facebook discussion websites or the well-publicized documentary on copyright and remix culture “”. Further, Laura Murray asks us to consider how laws are experienced by artists, patrons and the public and how that is distinctly different from the conversation that legal minds engage in.

In Conclusion

Osgoode Professor David Vaver made some closing remarks, recounting a recent story of how a woman’s application for professorship was not considered because she couldn’t attend the interview due to her being in an advanced state of pregnancy. The university denied her an alternative interview via conference call. She eventually launched a Human Rights Complaint. ��Professor Mary Jane Mossman finished the event by stressing that while some things have changed, not everything has changed at the same pace - in particular, sex segregation in the legal profession and IP. A point emphasized during the event is that only 18% of partners in general practice are women whereas 45% of associates are women. It is suggested that the gender issue in IP is further exacerbated, due in large part to the requirement of having a science or engineering background (largely male-dominated academic fields) to practice in fields such as patents.�� Professor Mossman believes that getting a group of like-minded people together to engage in dialogue and helping them realize that they are not alone can be used to stimulate change.

While many statistics suggest that we are only at the very beginning of addressing these challenges, strides are being made and we feel that events such as the roundtable is evidence of that progress! Reflecting on the day’s events, a few themes were highlighted. First is the idea of communication and the need to address the disconnect between how scientists, lawyers, policy-makers and laypersons understand and interpret IP issues and the law. The second is the role of universities in shaping how legal minds understand IP. It was suggested by one of the panelists that the models and perspectives endorsed in law schools are perpetuated in legal practice and beyond. Third is the importance of a forum for debate to ensure knowledge is shared and multidisciplinary perspectives are expressed. A caveat to this last point: Laura Murray stressed in her presentation that the tone of the debate is a critical concern. For example, a generational tone can be a strength but it can also be a limitation where the dialogue takes on a sexist, ageist or culturally-biased quality and in effect excludes some groups from participating.

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