Position: Hearing Officer,

Employer: , Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, Government of Canada,

Location: 50 Victoria Street, Gatineau, QC, K1A 0C9

(flexible but preference for candidates located or able to relocate to the Ottawa-Gatineau area)

Tenure: Full-time or Part-Time

Annual Salary Range: $71,599 to $77,368

Description:

Delegated by the Registrar of Trademarks, the Hearing Officer presides over legal proceedings and renders legally binding decisions to enforce and foster compliance with the Trademarks Act and trade agreements (e.g. CETA, CUSMA), and determines whether a party will maintain exclusive and monopolistic commercial trademark rights across Canada by issuing clear and well reasoned decisions appealable to the Federal Court.

Hearing Officers are expected to preside over hearings individually and render decisions on 30 to 40 cases per year as well as prepare and issue correspondence with parties.

Education and Experience

Essential:

• A Law degree from a recognized university in a relevant field of study or an acceptable combination of education, job-related training and/or experience
• Experience in applying legislation, regulations and jurisprudence/legal precedents in writing documents
• Experience as an adjudicator (presiding hearings and rendering legally binding and final decisions)

Asset:

• A law degree from a recognized post-secondary educational institution would be considered an asset
• Experience in trademark prosecution or examination would be considered an asset

Abilities:

• Effective communication (written & oral)
• Ability to draft rulings
• Judgement
• Analytical thinking
• Attention to detail
• Service excellence
• Relationship management and collaboration
• Results orientation

Contact: Martin Béliveau, Chairperson, Trademarks Opposition Board

(martin.beliveau@ised-isde.gc.ca)

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The IP CoE was established as part of the National IP strategy. The team represents a significant step forward for Canada and the value the government has placed on improving the IP culture with the Canadian public and within the federal government. The focus of the IP CoE is to provide strategic IP advice to government program designs and policies, develop best practices, perform data analysis on IP trends and approaches, and promote awareness on common IP issues. I was excited and encouraged to learn the systematic approach that the IP CoE team is taking in order to promote as part of improving the IP regime in Canada.

My work with the IP CoE offered a unique experience that helped me understand the current IP issues from the Canadian government’s perspective. IP plays an important role in the success of Canadian businesses – from growing the economy and creating jobs in Canada to helping Canadian businesses establish a competitive advantage in the international marketplace. The meetings I’ve attended provided an inside look into what Canada has done and how the Canadian government plans to pursue its stated goals under the national IP strategy.

The placement experience gave further insight into how the government operates internally. Following the on September 23, 2020, I attended a series of meetings that parsed through how the contents of the speech impacted the department’s work going forward. Throughout the placement, I was also reminded that my work products will be reported to senior officials and impact IP culture in Canada. The significance of the work I was part of made the experience even more meaningful.

COVID-19 has had a large impact on all aspects of life and the IP Intensive placement was no exception. Despite this, my placement experience adapted well to the new reality. I was able to work virtually from home in Toronto with the IP CoE team residing primarily in Ottawa. We had periodic working-level meetings to keep the team updated on each of our work assignments. I was in constant communication with my supervisors as well. Although I never got to meet the team in-person or experience working and living in Ottawa, I was warmly welcomed by the team and seamlessly integrated.

Overall, I had a wonderful experience with the IP CoE and would recommend the placement to anyone interested in learning about IP from a government’s point of view. I got a glimpse of what it’s like to work for the government and met incredible people along the way. I feel strongly that this experience will serve to benefit my professional development as I pursue a career in IP law.

I want to thank everyone at ISED, especially the IP CoE team, for making my experience so memorable. I also want to take this moment to thank everyone at IP Osgoode for this unique opportunity and for all the work they put in to make the placement possible despite the COVID- 19 pandemic. IP Osgoode is best described as an opportunity that keeps on giving. My placement has offered me a part-time position, which I started in January 2021. I am very grateful to have been able to rejoin the IP CoE team this semester and continue my placement work with them.

Written by Ryan Wong, JD Candidate 2021, enrolled in Professors D’Agostino and Vaver's 2020/2021 IP & Technology Law Intensive Program at Osgoode Hall Law School. As part of the course requirements, students were asked to write a reflective blog on their internship experience.

The post Experiencing IP at the National Level (IP Intensive Reflection) appeared first on IPOsgoode.

On April 26, 2021, the theme of World IP Day 2021 is “”. Since I founded the IP Innovation Clinic in 2010, the Clinic has helped countless innovators, entrepreneurs, and small businesses to do exactly that. Our students have provided basic legal information to clients who otherwise would not have any access to it. To date, the Clinic has subsidized over $2,000,000CDN of legal fees that would otherwise have been paid by those without access to resources. This past year, the Clinic has expanded its impact through the recently launched , a free legal chatbot which uses a vast database of credible IP information to answer users’ initial IP questions and guide them to the type of legal help they need. This is only the beginning of the ChatBot’s story.

In a critical time of Covid-19 isolation, I aim to ensure that the IP Innovation ChatBot’s content is accessible and attuned to the unique realities of underrepresented communities in Canada’s intellectual property (IP) innovation ecosystem; namely, women and indigenous peoples. Having assisted clients in these underrepresented groups in the IP Innovation Clinic, and through my own research and writing in this area, I have seen first-hand the distinct struggles these groups confront in the traditional IP innovation ecosystem and the distinct challenges they face to bring their innovations to society; from being silenced in their ideation phase to lacking adequate resources and know-how to develop IP strategies attuned to their unique needs and perspectives.

This AI-powered initiative has been launched thanks to the Canadian government’s , and supports its mandate to increase IP awareness and education by making IP information more accessible. These learnings can easily be applied to other areas of the law.

The ChatBot has been realized due to visionary IP Innovation Clinic champions backing our work, Innovation 91��ɫ at 91��ɫ, Ontario Centre of Innovation (OCI) at the very outset and Bergeron Entrepreneurs Science and Technology (BEST) Program at Lassonde School of Engineering and Norton Rose Fulbright (NRF) Canada LLP. Indeed, the technical and legal expertise of Partner, Maya Medeiros, and Al Hounsell at NRF, and our Osgoode JD team of students led by Ryan Wong, class of 2021. It is also an honour to work closely with other leaders in the federal government such as the Konstantinos Georgaras, CEO (Interim) at the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) and Jennifer Miller, Erin Campbell and their teams at Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED), who understand and work hard to overcome the challenges Canadian innovators face.

I previously uncovered the various challenges that underrepresented communities face in the IP innovation system and how grassroots initiatives, such as IP legal clinics, can assist in and in more recent work to use the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to build an IP Innovation ChatBot to make IP law more accessible. Going forward, I plan to expand on this foundational and empirical work to build the IP Innovation Clinic and the ChatBot to make the IP innovation ecosystem more accessible.

Ultimately, in an era of increasing technological disruption and lingering societal inequality and pandemic isolation, I hope to influence future legal education and make our justice system accessible to all Canadians.

Indeed, AI applications, including legal chatbots, use machine learning to make the law more understandable, manageable, useful, accessible, predictable, and efficient. Legal chatbots increase access to justice through their wider reach and lower costs. Many underrepresented communities receive either inadequate or no legal help at all. Technology currently cannot provide complex legal advice, but AI-powered online legal services can cost-effectively deliver accessible, basic legal help. Some, like our IP Innovation ChatBot, do so for free. Chatbots can thus democratize access to basic legal services for the underserved, and therefore deserve greater study and adoption.

Since its January 29, 2021 launch, the IP Innovation ChatBot has been a magnet for public use. Several members of the legal community have already inquired to learn how to emulate it. With the information from these analyses, I plan to design and build an enhanced, interactive, dynamic, and accessible portal powered by next-generation artificial intelligence operating on big data curated by our pioneering IP Innovation ChatBot.

The ChatBot will remain a free, sophisticated, and smart online tool, driven by AI and designed to cater to underrepresented and disenfranchised innovators. It will soon house key IP resources and information, leading updates, and links to Canadian and international government IP resources. The ChatBot’s scaled-up national platform will analyse its amassed archive of data and identify common IP knowledge translation problems to devise and anticipate solutions. Adapted for the COVID-19 era and beyond, the ChatBot will support the next generation of lawyers, educate and stimulate innovation from underrepresented communities, provide start-up entrepreneurs with access to IP resources, and be the public’s go-to tool for independent and impartial IP knowledge.

Prof Pina D’Agostino is Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School and Founder and Director of IP Osgoode, the IPilogue, the IP Innovation Clinic, and officially since January 2021 the recently launched IP Innovation Clinic ChatBot.

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I consider it to be a great blessing that the program not only continued but thrived notwithstanding the challenges of COVID-19. The two-week intensive held on Zoom was astutely condensed to avoid the dangers of – a subject about which I have written in one of my other . Thereafter, students were to complete their placements solely online while continuing to attend periodic Zoom classes sprinkled throughout the remainder of the semester. I’d like to take this moment to commend not only the program's administrators, but also the placement partners for continuing to execute upon its obligations to the program. The pandemic would have made any objection justifiable given the state of the world; however, thanks to the work of many, we were all able to continue with the program.

I was fortunate enough to have been selected for a placement with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office ; a position that would have traditionally required myself to relocate to Ottawa. And despite missing out on some “social” gatherings that would have taken place but for COVID-19, my mentor at CIPO quickly made me feel welcome to the team with pre-scheduled weekly updates even before my arrival – both professional and non-professional – that bridged the gap quite nicely.

is a special operating agency of that delivers intellectual property (IP) services in Canada and educates Canadians on how to use IP more effectively. My predominant role as a legal intern was to provide supporting research for internal policy initiatives; and the projects I worked justifiably spanned across the many different services and tools that CIPO offers to Canadians. Some of my more notable research projects included providing supporting research with regard to tools, how to meet the terms of the newly ratified , and as regards Canada’s relationship with First Nations.

With regard to my CUSMA research, since the ratification of the new NAFTA (CUSMA), s. requires that member Parties provide the means to adjust (extend) the term of the patent for patent applications that have been subject to “unreasonable delays” in the issuance of a patent. Subsection describes “unreasonable delays” as “a delay...of more than five years from the date of filing... or three years after a request for examination...”. Mexico and the US have already fulfilled their obligations. Canada does not contain a term adjustment for delays in its existing patent regime, and no such provision is included in the Implementation Act. Under Article of CUSMA, Canada will have four and a half years from July 1, 2020, to implement this change.

Overall, my Zoom-semester at the Canadian Intellectual Property Office was one that I will never forget. I had the opportunity to learn from top policy experts responsible for making decisions that shape the future of Canadians. The research I engaged in was not only enlightening, but inspiring, knowing that it will be supporting the decisions of individuals with such responsibility to our Country. I met some amazing people with the most brilliant minds. My only regret is that I wasn’t able to see them face to face (though, our social zoom calls were some of my favourite moments of learning; one could argue, the most important).

The IP Intensive is program like no other. For me, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that provided an avenue for myself to bridge the gap between my interests in law and my professional career. It provided an opportunity to gain experience applying the intellectual property doctrine we were taught in school to real world problems. Through this, I acquired new perspectives on how to think about the law and gained invaluable mentorship to smooth out the rough edges before I enter the work force. I highly recommend this program to any student interested in IP Law.

Written by Joseph Simile, JD Candidate 2021, enrolled in Professors D’Agostino and Vaver 2020/2021 IP & Technology Law Intensive Program at Osgoode Hall Law School. As part of the course requirements, students were asked to write a reflective blog on their internship experience.

The post The Inaugural Zoom Class of 2020 (IP Intensive Reflection) appeared first on IPOsgoode.

While Osgoode’s Intellectual Property Law and Technology Intensive Program 10-week internship was such an amazing and rewarding experience, this was coupled by great presentations held throughout the first two weeks of the program. While I have taken basically every IP course that Osgoode has to offer, the presentations from speakers really enriched my knowledge of IP and helped me engage with legal research on a deeper level. These presentations also sparked my thinking for my paper topic, which was a great boon to starting legal research early.

Throughout the internship I had many opportunities to hone my legal research skills and was able to begin gain expertise in learning the ways in which policy analysis is created. While I was placed with the Marketplace Framework Policy Branch within ISED, I was able to attend meetings with other departments and ministries. I feel that the skills I gained from attending and participating in meetings will be crucial in how I interact with anyone within the legal field, and in life generally. Working with ministries with different mandates, and still being able to find common ground in order to achieve a policy goal was admirable and watching my team do so almost effortlessly made me realize just how amazing the team was, and how I should learn from their example.

When I look back on my experience, I would say that my favourite moments with the team – besides getting an email full of copyright memes every Friday from a senior policy analyst – were the weekly meetings with my team. Just being able to learn about and ponder how important copyright and trademark matters were being pursed was incredible and being able to contribute to these conversations helped me to instill further confidence in my ability to engage with such complex matters. While it is unfortunate that the intensive this year took place remotely due to Covid, and I was not able to spend time and immerse myself in Ottawa, I still felt that I was with the team, which was mostly due to them making such an effort to make me have as similar to an experience remotely as I would if I had been there. I think it was at the end of the internship where it really clicked how lucky I was to be with the ISED team, where they created an infographic highlighting my experience with them during the internship (I definitely did not have to hold back tears!).

To any prospective student at Osgoode who is interested in IP, I eagerly recommend that you apply for the internship. Even if you are unsure if you want to pursue IP in the future, the skills and experience that you can gain from this experience are more than worth spending a semester doing so. I do not believe that you have to have the sole burning passion of practicing IP to take greatly from the internship, as anyone could be able to hone their personal and legal skills in some capacity through this experience. I can honestly say that I wish the intensive was not just one semester, as I would have absolutely loved to continue working on files.

Once again, I would like to thank all of my supervisors and the team at ISED for an amazing semester - especially to Senior Policy Analyst Luc Laforest who was instrumental in my learnings. I would also like to thank Professor Giuseppina D’Agostino, Professor David Vaver, Assistant Director Olha Senyshyn and the rest of the IP Osgoode team for the opportunity.

Written by Daniel Bartolomucci, JD Candidate 2021, enrolled in Professors D’Agostino and Vaver 2020/2021 IP & Technology Law Intensive Program at Osgoode Hall Law School. As part of the course requirements, students were asked to write a reflective blog on their internship experience.

The post IP policy in the Canadian context: My time with Innovation Science and Economic Development Canada (IP Intensive Reflection) appeared first on IPOsgoode.

With Canadians' mounting frustration and the dwindling prospects of exiting this pandemic any time soon, it is vital that we unite as a nation to innovate. How Canada continues to respond to the pandemic will also define how we respond to future global challenges. Leading the development of new vaccines, more effective personal protective equipment, and new and improved systems of distribution and administration of the vaccine are just some instances of what is necessary now. This pandemic has highlighted our societal inequalities and our fractured innovative landscape.

The university, one of Canada’s cradles of innovation, must continue to innovate out of this crisis and future crises. With innovation more critical than ever, how do we increase collaboration, coordination, and access to salient data and information during prolonged isolation?

Intellectual property (IP) is a powerful legal tool to foster innovation. It merits a context-specific approach on when, and whether, to protect assets from the inventor/ startup stage to the scale-up phase. However, COVID-19 has amplified the challenges faced by our brightest researchers and innovators. They are unable to access laboratories, have limited access to funds to start up a company, lack the know-how and support, and do not know where to go to obtain the needed help to protect their inventions. Under these conditions, IP can go undetected until it is too late. Patents, trademarks, and copyrights protecting valuable work are not well understood, and often never see the light of day. Finally, when IP is detected and advised to be protected, the innovation costs are prohibitive, starting with the patent pro- cess costing upwards of $20,000 to protect a single patent.

It is no wonder then how Canada, a country with so much talent and potential, is still playing catch up to other countries’ patent filings and, importantly, commercialization successes in the form of licensing deals, startups, and scale-ups from their own valuable IP.

As a response, closer partnerships between universities and industries are becoming commonplace. Take as an example the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca trailblazing partnership to tackle the global pandemic with a COVID-19 vaccine. While these university-industry partnerships can help, they also risk a power imbalance between Canadian universities and multinational companies. There is no guarantee that Canadian jobs will be generated and retained in Canada, even though they may be founded on Canadian science and innovation.

Another promising mechanism is the use of university commercialization clinics such as the IP Innovation Clinic at 91��ɫ’s Osgoode Hall Law School. The clinic is the first of its kind, where law firms supervise law students who work directly with clients to formulate an IP strategy. This initiative accounts for more than 6,000 hours of pro-bono work, saving innovators close to $2-million to date during a nascent stage where resources are scarce.

One of the clinic’s success stories is Skygauge Robotics, a drone robotics company that landed a $3.3-million funding deal, and did so during a pandemic through the clinic’s support. Skygauge’s ambition is to build a company that keeps people innovating and working in Canada — a perfect example of how providing a friendly and supportive innovation ecosystem can be a game-changer to Canada’s innovation economy.

Seeing the need to continue innovating, especially during the pandemic, the IP Innovation Clinic, seized on the possibilities of artificial intelligence (AI). Enter Isaac Pewton, the IP Innovation ChatBot that can now answer any number of intellectual property questions. Powered by AI, the ChatBot learns and becomes smarter the more questions are asked of it. The goal is to balance the informational asymmetry in the innovation ecosystem and make valuable IP knowledge accessible to everyone for free.

This ChatBot is more important than ever to underrepresented communities, including women and Indigenous peoples who have typically not fared well in our in- novation ecosystem, and whose conditions are exacerbated from the pandemic. The ChatBot empowers these disenfranchised and remote communities with valuable information and direct access to the clinic for further services for free.

The ChatBot itself is an innovative example of a successful university-government-private partnership. Funded by Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada’s IP Clinics Program, pursuant to the federal government’s National IP Strategy and developed by a team of lawyers and technical experts at Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP, and Osgoode Hall Law School, the AI-powered ChatBot, by providing highly valuable IP information, can help Canadian entrepreneurs scale and learn quickly to innovate us out of this crisis and help future proof Canada against the next one.

Prof Giuseppina D’Agostino is a senior fellow with CIGI’s International Law Research Program (ILRP), effective November 2016. She is the Founder & Director of IP Osgoode, the IP Intensive Program, and the Innovation Clinic, the Editor-in-Chief for the IPilogue and the Intellectual Property Journal, and an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School.

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Minister Bains highlighted how IP rich small and medium entities (SMEs) are twice as likely to be high growth and four times as likely to export. He pointed directly to cleantech as part of Canada’s needed “green recovery” from the financial impact of the ongoing pandemic. He looked to the patent collective to help Canada in its transition from an “industrial economy to an innovation economy” and explained how the IAC will “foster the collaboration that will bring Canada to a sustainable future.”

Following Minister Bains’ remarks, a roundtable lead by Mr. Hinton featured from IAC partner Business Development Canada, leaders from two potential IAC member companies, Daniela Roper of and Jon Lipinski of , and Mr. Cowan of the IAC. The potential members provided insights as to how the IAC would act as a shield for member companies that draw the attention of international behemoths, particularly nonpracticing entities, which are concerned about their freedom to operate. They relayed how as their companies mature, their IP becomes both a threat and attractive to these behemoths. They are therefore exposed to risk created by the leverage the large companies’ substantial IP portfolios can bring to bear.

Mr. Cowan described how these issues are being exacerbated during this pandemic driven downturn as the cost associated with holding patent assets encourages companies to sell them and how this gives NPEs the opportunity to amass patents at low costs. He relayed how the financial pressure furthers the gap between those companies and countries who can think about IP and those who do not have the capital to do so. For him, it is important how Minister Bains has positioned Canada well in this space and that the IAC is a key piece in supporting Canada’s endeavours to be one of the countries that thinks about IP by helping companies with the burden of doing so.

Both Mr. Hinton and Mr. Cowan explained that the IAC was not going to replace traditional IP service providers nor is its goal to acquire patents either from or explicitly for the practice of their members. Rather, its mission is to “give companies the knowledge base to help them ask the right questions of the IP service providers” and to provide them with the intelligence to back up those questions. The idea is to create a situation where the members can better engage with their service provider.

Mr. Cowan stressed that it is the intention of the IAC to tailor its patent portfolio to its members’ needs as they develop, but as an initial approach, it will make acquisitions to pull low value deterring patents off the market and to rescue patents at risk of being abandoned from being acquired by entities that would pose as an obstruction. While the IAC may license to members or provide a covenant not to sue, the primary purpose is to clear the way for Canadian innovation.

The plan, which Mr. Cowan said was not novel but rather tailored to the Canadian environment, is to use the collective force of Canada as a whole to acquire a strategic defensive patent portfolio, to provide a shield for its members. This will allow Canadian SMEs to operate in the same waters as these larger typically foreign entities with at least some cover.

With its launch, the IAC is now accepting members and is excited to begin the work of supporting Canadian SMEs to better understand, commercialize and protect their IP.

Jared Sues is an IP Osgoode Innovation Clinic Coordinator and regular IPilogue Contributor

The post Canada Officially Launches its Innovation Asset Collective appeared first on IPOsgoode.

Starting with quality, he emphasized the importance of having telecom services that are fast enough to allow everyone to participate in a digital community. One of the efforts that have been made to improve quality is the collaboration with Ontario and Quebec to launch (the Evolution of Networked Services through a Corridor in Québec and Ontario for Research and Innovation) partnership. This $400 million public-private partnership provides access to 5G networks to SMEs, researchers and academia. Through ENCQOR, the federal government hopes to advance 5G networks and drive long-term economic growth across Canada.

Minister Bains also described the 5-year plan (to be implemented between 2018 to 2022), which has the objective of maximizing the amount of spectrum that is available in order to avoid "" and ensure that Canadians have unhindered access to wireless networks.

With nearly 70% of all schoolwork being connected to the Internet, access to the Internet is a necessity for our youth today, not a luxury. However, with 1.2 million Canadian children living in poverty, such access is unequal and incredibly limited for a large number of young Canadians. Minister Bains stated that it is important to correct this imbalance and ensure that these children have access to high speed Internet so that they can progress in both their academic careers and future endeavours. Similarly, measures have been taken to ensure that rural communities have access to high-speed Internet with the . Through this program, $500 million will be invested by 2021 into rural communities to help bring new infrastructure and provide coverage nationwide.

The provision of free computers to schools nationwide is one way the government is tackling the issue of cost by making telecom services more affordable and allowing low income Canadians the opportunity to participate in the digital economy.

Minister Bains's key message is that this is all “... about the kids”. The purpose of these government initiatives is to help young Canadians who do not have reasonable access to the Internet – "every youth should have the means to stay connected in this digital economy to fulfil their aspirations."

In conclusion, Minister Bains lauded industry support has being integral to the success of these initiatives and encouraged the IT industry to “” and make Canada a global centre for innovation. Despite the efforts and consequent successes that have resulted from actively addressing the issues of quality, coverage and affordability of innovative technologies, Minister Bain's demonstrate that building Canada’s innovation ecosystem is a never ending work in progress.

Neda Foroughian is an IPilogue Editor and a JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School.

The post Canada's Progress with Making Innovative Technology Accessible & Affordable appeared first on IPOsgoode.

Throughout the duration of my placement, I worked in the CTPD department with an extremely supportive set of colleagues and primarily dealt with trademarks law. Now, I had never taken a course on trade-mark law, but my placement provided me with far greater knowledge than I could have attained in a lecture style theoretical course. Due to the secrecy of my work, I am unable to share the specifics, but can state that my work involved the research of trademark policy of multiple jurisdictions, IP enforcement policies in general, and certain aspects of trade-secret law.

At my placement, my work was not limited to sole research. In fact, on the first day, my supervisor invited me to attend two meetings at the Global Affairs Canada (GAC) building. The first meeting involved a discussion of their most recent trademark policy draft, while the second meeting consisted of a de-brief of a round of international negotiations. During the second meeting, there were multiple governmental departments present, such as: Canadian Heritage, CIPO, etc. and the discussion involved far more than IP. The meeting allowed me to appreciate the importance of international negotiations and the priorities for Canada.

While I assumed that the first day of my work would become the highlight of my placement, I was quickly proven wrong. Only a few days later, on September 15, 2017, I was once again invited for a meeting at GAC where the Chinese delegation was present. This meeting involved a discussion on the IP enforcement policies of Canada and China. The meeting provided me a greater appreciation for policy development, international relations, and the importance of IP discussions. And I was extremely thankful to be able to not only sit in, but also to be able to introduce myself as a student intern for ISED.

My experiential learning did not end with the meetings at GAC. Rather, in the following weeks, I was continually being exposed to one of many roles that my supervisor, a senior policy analyst, performs at ISED. A notable experience was when I received the privilege of attending a policy drafting meeting. The meeting was held at the Department of Justice (DOJ) building and consisted of myself, my supervisor, a legal counsel for the DOJ, an Anglophone drafter, and a Francophone drafter. This was the first time I was in a drafting room, and once my excitement calmed, I began to appreciate the art of policy drafting. I found it immensely interesting to discover that the research my supervisor had me conducting was being referred to during the policy drafting meeting.

All in all, I am extremely thankful for being able to complete my placement at ISED. I could not have asked for better placement experience.

Ankit Sareen is a JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School and was enrolled in Osgoode’s Intellectual Property Law and Technology Intensive Program. As part of the program requirements, students were asked to write a reflective blog on their internship experience.

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