We invite you to participate in the tryouts for the ! We are fortunate to welcome back our coaches from Bereskin & Parr LLP, including 2017 finalists Paul Blizzard & Denver Bandstra! Students on the team will also practice mooting with and receive direct feedback from various B&P associates and partners.

Students interested in trying out for Osgoode’s PADC team must submit answers to our����������3 pm on Friday, September 23, 2022.�� Please send your answers in a Word document with your name in the file name to��iposgoode@osgoode.yorku.ca.

Each member of the team will receive up to��3 credits��for participating in the competition.��Please note that only 2L and 3L students may participate. Please also note that under Academic Rule 4.3e, students may participate for credit in only one lawyer simulation competition in a given academic year unless they obtain permission from the Director of Mooting and Lawyering Simulations.

About the National Patent Application Drafting Competition

Originally created in 2014 as a midwest competition, the Competition is today a national inter-law school competition designed to introduce law students to issues arising in United States patent law. Participants will have the opportunity to develop their patent prosecution skills by applying legal principles to a hypothetical invention scenario (“Invention Statement”) and appreciating the intricacies of drafting a patent specification and claims that are both patentable and valuable. Each team will complete a search pertaining to the Invention Statement, draft a utility patent application, and defend their decisions before a panel of judges comprising USPTO executives/personnel, patent practitioners, academia and/or special guest judges.

The Competition consists of regional rounds held virtually. The winner of each regional round will compete in the National Finals held at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. ��

Invention statements will be released to teams in early November 2022. Regional virtual tryouts will be held on March 4, 2023, followed by the National Finals Competition on April 14, 2023.��

Read about the experiences of past students here:

The complete set of rules for this year, can be found here: .

If you have further questions or would like more information, please email iposgoode@osgoode.yorku.ca.

We look forward to another great year at the Patent Application Drafting Competition!

The post CALL FOR TRYOUTS - USPTO National Patent Application Drafting Competition appeared first on IPOsgoode.

Prof. Giuseppina D'Agostino is the Founder & Director of IP Osgoode and the IP Innovation Clinic, an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, and the Editor-in-Chief of the IPilogue and the Intellectual Property Journal.

IP Osgoode and the IP Innovation Clinic are thrilled to welcome you back on campus for the new school year! After almost 2 full years of completely virtual operations, we look forward to finally seeing our students and colleagues live in person! Here’s a preview of some of the activities you can get involved in over the next 8 months:

“IP Osgoode Speaks Series” is back in person!

Since 2008, we’ve hosted regular IP Osgoode Speaks lectures with guests from industry, academia, and the judiciary (including the Supreme Court of Canada) from Canada and around the world. After over 2 years in lockdown, we are proud to share that the IP Osgoode Speaks Series returned on 31 August 2022, welcoming Dan Bereskin to speak on “Balancing Freedom of Expression with Copyright and Trademark Rights: Art or Science?”

We look forward to hosting Dr. Lior Zemer, Dean of the Harry Radzyner Law School at Reichman University in Israel, in November to discuss “Art and Authorship in Extreme Circumstance: The Case for Nazi Ghettos.” ��

Please stay tuned for more details about ��on our website and by subscribing to our weekly e-Newsletter, the��.��You can also find recordings of our on our website.

IPilogue

���ܰ�����is one of Canada’s leading IP Blogs with an enthusiastic international following. To date,��we have published almost 3000 original posts and over 1400 comments.

The number of visitors to our website and our weekly newsletter () readership continue to grow and span the globe. Our diverse����continued to blog throughout the summer and constitute an important part of IP Osgoode’s team and vision to foster diverse views on intellectual property and technology matters. In order to keep abreast of the latest issues in IP and technology in Canada and around the world, and to learn more about IP Osgoode’s events and activities, please to the IPIGRAM��and follow us on��,��, ���Ի���.

We are����for this academic year. If you are interested in joining the IPilogue Team, please send your cover letter, CV, law school transcripts, and a writing sample to iposgoode@osgoode.yorku.ca��������Friday 9 September 2022.

We will also continue to accept submissions on a guest basis.��For more information about submitting articles to the IPilogue, click��.

IP Innovation Clinic

Now in its twelfth year of operation, the IP Innovation Clinic continues to complement Osgoode’s rich history of clinical offerings by providing students with an opportunity to gain hands-on, practical experience while learning about some common early-stage IP and business-related issues facing under-resourced inventors, entrepreneurs, and start-up companies.

To this end, we����our AI-powered��, a free online service offering IP law information to users and further empowering creators with the tools to protect their IP. We look forward to continue to develop the IP Innovation ChatBot by expanding its knowledge base and making it more accessible, particularly to members of communities traditionally underrepresented in the IP innovation ecosystem. In the meantime,��we encourage you to ask our����as many questions as possible. The more questions it receives, the better it becomes at answering them. You can learn more about it by watching the recording of our launch event��.

�ճ������continues to expand our client base and provide our students with a valuable and unique experiential learning opportunity.��We are currently��for the 2022-2023 academic term. If you are interested, please send your completed application to ipinnovationclinic@osgoode.yorku.ca ������Wednesday 7 September 2022.

To stay up to date with Clinic activities, please follow us on , and .

Oxford International Intellectual Property Law Moot & USPTO National Patent Application Drafting Competition

Following from the momentum of our��third-place finish at last year’s Patent Application Drafting Competition, we will soon host tryouts for this year’s competition, as well as the Oxford International Intellectual Property Law Moot. Look out for our emails and social media posts to learn about how you can get involved in either competition.

Our Writing Competitions

Gowling WLG Best Blog in IP Law & Technology Prize

Each year, through the sponsorship of Gowling WLG, four prizes are awarded to full-time Osgoode students. The recipients for the 2021-2022 academic year were����on the IP Osgoode website.��Eligibility for the����is officially open. All submissions by Osgoode JD students between now and the end of the Winter term will be considered for the prize.

Canada’s IP Writing Challenge

IP Osgoode, together with the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada (IPIC), runs����to further enhance intellectual property public policy research and discussion. This competition is open to three categories of entrants: JD students, LLM and PhD students, and practitioners.

The submission deadline is July 1 every year. This year, we received a wide range of entries from a broad spectrum of backgrounds and institutions across Canada. We thank all those who participated in the Writing Challenge. We are grateful to Dan Bereskin, Professor Ikechi Mgbeoji and Justice Roger Hughes for agreeing to judge the articles again this year. Stay tuned, as��we will announce the Challenge winners in late October�����Ի���open our next competition early next year, among various other initiatives.

A community is only as vibrant as its contributors. As we work and live amidst concerns about COVID-19, even while emerging from the lockdowns, we continue to confront complex and challenging debates in intellectual property and related areas of technology.��Please share with us your ideas to enrich our program and to do our part to make a difference during these unprecedented times. Let us know if you would like to get more involved or if you would like to announce any IP & tech-related research projects or activities.

A community is only as strong and vibrant as its members, I welcome your ideas, projects and anything else you would like to see us do at IP Osgoode for more IP and tech fun!

The post Welcome Back to Osgoode! What to Expect from IP Osgoode & the IP Innovation Clinic in the New Year appeared first on IPOsgoode.

Students interested in trying out for Osgoode’s PADC team must submit answers to our�� in a Word document with your name in the file name to��iposgoode@osgoode.yorku.ca.

Each member of the team will receive up to��3 credits��for participating in the competition.��Please note that only 2L and 3L students may participate.��Please also note that under Academic Rule 4.3e, students may participate for credit in only one lawyer simulation competition in a given academic year unless they obtain permission from the Director of Mooting and Lawyering Simulations.

About the Patent Drafting Competition

Originally created in 2014 as a midwest competition, the Competition is today a national inter-law school competition designed to introduce law students to issues arising in United States patent law. Participants will have the opportunity to develop their patent prosecution skills by applying legal principles to a hypothetical invention scenario (“Invention Statement”) and appreciating the intricacies of drafting a patent specification and claims that are both patentable and valuable. Each team will complete a search pertaining to the Invention Statement, draft a utility patent application, and defend their decisions before a panel of judges comprising USPTO executives/personnel, patent practitioners, academia and/or special guest judges.

The Competition consists of regional rounds held virtually. The winner of each regional round will compete in the National Finals held at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. ��

The Competition consists of regional rounds held virtually. The winner of each regional round will compete in the National Finals held at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. ��

Invention statements will be released to teams on November 1, 2021. Team patent applications will be due on January 16, 2022. Regional virtual tryouts will be held on March 5, 2022, followed by the National Finals Competition on April 8, 2022.��

Read about the experiences of the students on last year’s team here:��

The complete set of rules for this year, can be found here:��.

If you have further questions or would like more information, please email Ashley Moniz at��amoniz@osgoode.yorku.ca.

We look forward to another great year at the Patent Drafting Competition!

The post REMINDER: Tryouts for the USPTO National Patent Application Drafting Competition Team - DEADLINE TOMORROW appeared first on IPOsgoode.

Students interested in trying out for Osgoode’s PADC team must submit answers to our by 3 pm on Friday, October 22, 2021.�� Please send your answers in a Word document with your name in the file name to iposgoode@osgoode.yorku.ca.

��Each member of the team will receive up to 3 credits for participating in the competition. Please note that only 2L and 3L students may participate.��Please also note that under Academic Rule 4.3e, students may participate for credit in only one lawyer simulation competition in a given academic year unless they obtain permission from the Director of Mooting and Lawyering Simulations.

About the Patent Drafting Competition

Originally created in 2014 as a midwest competition, the Competition is today a national inter-law school competition designed to introduce law students to issues arising in United States patent law. Participants will have the opportunity to develop their patent prosecution skills by applying legal principles to a hypothetical invention scenario (“Invention Statement”) and appreciating the intricacies of drafting a patent specification and claims that are both patentable and valuable. Each team will complete a search pertaining to the Invention Statement, draft a utility patent application, and defend their decisions before a panel of judges comprising USPTO executives/personnel, patent practitioners, academia and/or special guest judges.

The Competition consists of regional rounds held virtually. The winner of each regional round will compete in the National Finals held at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. ��

The Competition consists of regional rounds held virtually. The winner of each regional round will compete in the National Finals held at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. ��

Invention statements will be released to teams on November 1, 2021. Team patent applications will be due on January 16, 2022. Regional virtual tryouts will be held on March 5, 2022, followed by the National Finals Competition on April 8, 2022.��

Read about the experiences of the students on last year’s team here:

The complete set of rules for this year, can be found here: .

If you have further questions or would like more information, please email Ashley Moniz at amoniz@osgoode.yorku.ca.

We look forward to another great year at the Patent Drafting Competition!

The post CALL FOR TRYOUTS - USPTO National Patent Application Drafting Competition appeared first on IPOsgoode.

It is our great pleasure to provide you all with a sneak preview of what we have planned for the 2021-2022 academic year and encourage you to participate.

IPilogue

Our is one of Canada’s leading IP Blogs with an enthusiastic international following. To date, we have published over 2,600 original posts and 1,400 comments.

The number of visitors to our website and our weekly newsletter () readership continue to grow exponentially and span the globe. Our diverse continued to blog throughout the summer and constitutes to be an important part of IP Osgoode’s team and vision of fostering diverse views on intellectual property and technology matters. In order to keep abreast of the latest in IP and technology in Canada and around the world, and to learn more about IP Osgoode’s events and activities, please to the IPIGRAM and follow us on , , and .

We are for this academic year. If you are interested in joining the IPilogue Team, please send your cover letter, CV, law school transcripts, and a writing sample to iposgoode@osgoode.yorku.ca by the end of the day today.

We will also continue to accept submissions on a guest basis. For more information about submitting articles to the IPilogue, click .

IP Innovation Clinic

Now in its eleventh year of operation, the IP Innovation Clinic continues to complement Osgoode’s rich history of clinical offerings by providing students with an opportunity to gain hands-on, practical experience while learning about some common early-stage IP and business-related issues facing under-resourced inventors, entrepreneurs, and start-up companies.

To this end, we our AI-powered , a free online service offering IP law information to users and further empowering creators with the tools to protect their IP. We look forward to continuing to develop the IP Innovation ChatBot by expanding its knowledge base and making it more accessible, but in the meantime, we encourage you to ask our as many questions as possible. The more questions it receives, the better it becomes at answering them. You can learn more about it by watching the recording of our launch event .

The continues to expand our client base and provide our students with a valuable and unique experiential learning opportunity. We are currently for the 2021-2022 academic term. If you are interested, please send your completed application to iposgoode@osgoode.yorku.ca by the end of the day today.

Open Research Assistant Positions

Prof. Pina D’Agostino and Prof. David Vaver are hiring , primarily for assistance in copyright law. If you are interested, please send a completed application to iposgoode@osgoode.yorku.ca by September 10, 2021.

Oxford International Intellectual Property Law Moot & USPTO National Patent Application Drafting Competition

Following from the momentum of our , we will soon host tryouts for this year’s competition, as well as the USPTO National Patent Application Drafting Competition. Look out for our emails and social media posts to learn about how you can get involved in either competition.

IP Intensive

The IP Intensive is a unique program that gives students practical, experiential education in a workplace setting for an entire term in lieu of being in the classroom. Our students gain valuable practical experience which will assist them in obtaining employment after law school, and some of our students’ research in the program has been published in the Intellectual Property Journal (IPJ).

Each year we build upon what we accomplished in previous years in the and offer our students an even more enriched and engaging experience. For the Fall 2021 term, we are proud to have partnered with two new placement organizations: Canadian Heritage (International Trade Branch) and Xanadu Quantum Technologies. We are pleased to welcome our returning placement organizations: Alectra Utilities, AstraZeneca Canada Inc., the Bergeron Entrepreneurs & Science and Technology (BEST) Lab, Canadian Heritage (Broadcast, Copyright and Creative Marketplace Branch), CBC, Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO), SOCAN, The Globe and Mail, TEVA Canada Limited, TVO, and ventureLAB.

Professor will be the Director of the IP Intensive program this year. Throughout the term, he will meet with the students 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. The students will also blog on the IPilogue and maintain a reflective journal about their internship experiences. The students will be responsible for leading seminar presentations during the last week of November, and ultimately submitting a major research paper.

The IP Intensive Program kicks off with two weeks of class seminars featuring experts from the IP community. The seminars cover a wide variety of topics, from “Collective Copyright Administration” to “Intellectual Property Reform Process”, and from “IP Litigation & Remedies” to “Digital Content Platforms & Broadcasting Industry”, just to name a few. Some of our experts speaking include members of the judiciary, officials from the Government of Canada, Canadian and U.S. IP litigation experts, in-house counsel, top executives from a broad range of industries, and practitioners from major Canadian law firms.

Olha Senyshyn’s Departure and Ashley Moniz’s Welcome

This Fall, we bid a bittersweet farewell to IP Osgoode’s Assistant Director, Olha Senyshyn. Olha has been a valuable member of the IP Osgoode team for the past two years. We will miss her very much and wish her all the best in her future endeavours.

We are pleased to share that Ashley Moniz, who joined us this past January, will continue in his role as Assistant Director and succeed Olha. We look forward to continue to work with Ashley as he has already proven to be wonderful addition to our team.

“Bracing for Impact: Webinar Series” continues & “IP Osgoode Speaks Series” Returns

Building on the success of our signature and in our webinar series over the past year, we plan to continue to use our Bracing for Impact: Webinar Series to maintain the dialogue among academic scholars, practitioners, and industry leaders from Canada and around the world, including Israel and the EU. The series of events explores critical issues in emerging technologies, data policy and governance strategies, with a focus on AI, blockchain, privacy, disruptive technology and tech innovation and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In collaboration with the Harry Radzyner Law School at the IDC Herzliya in Israel and Microsoft Canada, we have so far hosted 3 events in our Bracing for Impact Webinar Series: “” (22 June 2020), “” (1 December 2020), and “” (28 June 2021), the latter webinar was also hosted in collaboration with Alectra Inc.’s GRE&T Centre and featured the newly-minted Ontario Minister of the Environment, Conservation & Parks, David Piccini. Each webinar took place virtually over Microsoft Teams in the format of a panel discussion featuring scholars from across North America, Europe, and Israel.

You can read more about each of our past events and watch recordings of each webinar on our . We look forward to launching our new Bracing for Impact website very soon, so stay tuned for that!

We also plan to revive our IP Osgoode Speaks Series. Since 2008, we’ve hosted 29 IP Osgoode Speaks lectures with guests from industry, academia, and the judiciary (including the Supreme Court of Canada) from Canada and around the world. We hope to have even more distinguished speakers join us this year.

Please stay tuned for more details on upcoming events by visiting our ��and subscribing to our weekly e-Newsletter, the .��

Our Writing Competitions

Gowling WLG Best Blog in IP Law & Technology Prize

Each year, through the sponsorship of Gowling WLG, four prizes are awarded to full-time Osgoode students. The recipients for the 2020-2021 academic year were on the IP Osgoode website. Eligibility for the opens today. All submissions by Osgoode JD students between now and the end of the Winter term will be considered for the prize.

Canada’s IP Writing Challenge

IP Osgoode, together with the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada (IPIC), runs to further enhance intellectual property public policy research and discussion. This competition is open to three categories of entrants: JD students, LLM and PhD students, and practitioners.

The submission deadline is July 1 every year. This year, we received a wide range of entries from a broad spectrum of backgrounds and institutions across Canada.�� We thank all those who participated in the Writing Challenge. We are grateful to Dan Bereskin, Professor Ikechi Mgbeoji and Justice Roger Hughes for agreeing to judge the articles again this year. Stay tuned, as we will announce the Challenge winners in late October and open our next competition early next year, among various other initiatives.

A community is only as vibrant as its contributors. Given the challenges of the ongoing pandemic, we continue to confront complex and challenging debates in intellectual property and related areas of technology.��Please share with us your ideas to enrich our program and to do our part to make a difference during these unprecedented times. Let us know if you would like to get more involved or if you would like to announce any IP & tech-related research projects or activities.

The post Welcome Back to IP Osgoode: Here's a Sneak Peek at what's to come this year appeared first on IPOsgoode.

We were given a hypothetical inventor’s disclosure, which this year involved a collision avoidance helmet. The disclosure provided information on why the invention was created, what features it included, and drawings of the invention. Although the disclosure provided a lot of information, it was challenging at first to sort through all the details and determine what was relevant for the invention. There was also the added challenge of the inventor not being a real person who we could call ask to explain certain aspects in more detail or discuss why a certain feature was included. We’ve since learned that the real world of patent drafting requires a lot more client interaction to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Fortunately, our two excellent coaches, and from Bereskin & Parr LLP, helped us along the way. They made the competition much more approachable, helping us know where to start, and giving us the “dos” and “don’ts” of patent drafting. They helped us figure out a roadmap, starting with a prior art search and then focusing on claim drafting. To conduct our prior art search, we pulled out all the key features of the invention and used these as keywords to find the relevant prior art. Although we were confident that we had a workable list of related keywords for our prior art search, we were surprised to find a lot of prior art that shared our invention’s features. In fact, one prior art reference had almost all of the features of our invention. This prior art reference consisted of an augmented reality motorcycle helmet with comparable audio and visual systems, capabilities of contacting emergency responders in a collision, and even the option to add full or partial brake control to prevent a collision. Consequently, this really limited our claim drafting strategy as we had to keep the patent requirements of novelty and obviousness in mind.

In drafting our claims, we decided on three independent and seven dependent claims. The independent claims consisted of an apparatus, method, and system claim. Admittedly, our first attempt at claim drafting was very naive. We used terms such as ‘helmet’ and ‘camera’, which we later learned were restricting as they didn’t account for the non-helmet and non-video features of our invention, respectively. We also made the mistake of claiming features that other inventors could easily work around. As such, in our first few meetings with Paul and Denver, we focused on refining our claims to make them broader. We also focused on identifying the point of our invention. That said, during our next few attempts, we wanted to root the claims in what we believed was the most novel and non-obvious feature of our invention: the ability to accelerate and decelerate in the event of an impending collision. Or, as we fancily called it, ‘positive and negative acceleration’.

We decided to include this feature in our independent claims. For example, in our method claim, we drafted a step-by-step approach wherein the cameras and sensors of the wearable headpiece (the broader term for helmet that we decided on) would detect a threat object and subsequently engage breaks or the electronic power assist to provide positive or negative acceleration in the event of an impending collision. In our system claim, we drafted a circuitry wherein a control signal would be transferred from the receiver to the transmitter by the processor – all of which were embedded within the wearable headpiece – to do the same. As for our dependent claims, we included less important features of our invention which served to invalidate a subsequent invention should it successfully go through the independent claims without infringing. Overall, our independent claims varied in scope and content in order to strike a balance between honouring our inventor’s vision and gaining as wide protection as possible.

While we experienced great relief upon submitting our patent application and a sense of joy after conquering the tediousness of claim drafting, we went to the virtual regional rounds ready for questioning; sure enough, we were challenged on the narrowness of some aspects of our claims. All this to say, this experience taught us that the claim drafting process is never-ending, but that’s okay. Different people will have different approaches and viewpoints and there is no one perfect claim. We tried, and we are extremely proud of our growth in just a few months. Not to mention, we did this all virtually for the first time ever.

We encourage anyone interested in patent prosecution to try out for next year’s team. It’s a challenging but extremely rewarding experience!

Written by Maddie Lynch and Eloise Somera.��

Maddie is a second year JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. She is a contributing IPilogue editor, Intellectual Property Journal editor and IP Innovation Clinic Fellow.

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

The post 2021 USPTO National Patent Application Drafting Competition appeared first on IPOsgoode.