Launched in 2010, the Osgoode Innovation Clinic was the first student-staffed IP legal clinic of its kind in Canada. Osgoode students, who are supervised and mentored by lawyers from , offer pro bono legal assistance to start-ups. By providing our students with the opportunity to help start-ups with real-world IP-related business issues, the Innovation Clinic not only helps educate our next generation of legal thinkers and practitioners on how to commercialize IP but it also minimizes some of the access to justice barriers that can so often choke a start-up company in its nascent stages.

In its seven years of operation, the Innovation Clinic has attracted a broad range of clients including walk-ins from the general public, referrals from a number of external organizations, such as the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE), ventureLAB, OCADU, and the 91��ɫ Entrepreneurship Development Institute, and through formal collaborations between 91��ɫ’s and the Lassonde School of Engineering’s .

Earlier this year, we were happy to a new partnership with the International Law Research Program (ILRP) at the The partnership aims to expand the Innovation Clinic, support research that critically evaluates the Innovation Clinic model as well as clinic models elsewhere, and identify potential opportunities for developing a network of clinics in Canada and beyond.

Whether you are a student, legal practitioner, entrepreneur or inventor, there are many ways for you to get involved with the Innovation Clinic or benefit from its services and resources. Click to learn more about the Innovation Clinic or contact us at iposgoode@osgoode.yorku.ca

On World IP Day, we encourage our readership to join the conversation in the comments section below. Which innovation has most improved your life? What more can be done to make sure new technologies reach the people who need them? What do you think should be the priorities for future innovation?

Giuseppina D’Agostino 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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J: So, could you tell me about The Archaeologists?

H: It’s a book I’ve been writing for about six years or so. It focuses on the fictional edge city of Wissisauga, Ontario, and the discovery of what may be human bones in a suburban backyard. So there’s a series of characters that we meet who all have ambitions around this discovery, and they try to shape it to benefit themselves, or to fit it into how they’d like to see the world. It’s a bit of a thriller, and a bit of a mystery, where a lot of the chapters ends with an “oh I can’t believe they did that.”

J: Does it have any thematic links to your previous works?

H: All my books in one way or another are about how we define ourselves, and how we come to terms with the story that we are trying to tell. We try and make that story actually reflect itself in the real world, which often doesn’t care about what we think of ourselves. So in terms of the big picture, all of my books are about identity and alienation in the so-called postmodern milieu.

J: So why did you decided to pursue online serialization, prior to traditional publishing? How does this impact the way you create content— and the way your content will be viewed?

H: There isn’t just one thing that led to my decision. Of course, the content of the book comes first, and I thought the material lends well to the format. You see the world through six different characters, with each chapter focusing on a new perspective. So I think it’s fun to read it as a serial once a week, and gradually see the connection between these characters. It makes sense for this kind of book, where the whole point is to create separate, but cohesive stories that would pull people in.

Then of course, there are some experimental reasons. As novelists, we are in a losing battle with the internet. You battle constantly trying to protect your copyrights, and to make sure people don’t illegally download your books. You’re battling against behemoths like Amazon, which make life very hard for more offbeat work— or anything that isn’t a mainstream bestseller.You’ve got a million clickbait links every day. You got every kind of entertainment, fighting for attention. The full length book doesn’t really have a great place on the internet, despite various people trying.

Sometimes you just get tired of fighting, and you just wanna try to find some way to make the internet work for you. So this is a cultural experiment in many ways: can I pull people into a story in such a way that wouldn’t be possible without the connective tissue that is the internet?

At any rate, the worst thing that can happen is some people read it online, and decide not to buy the book. But even then I have reached more people than I could have otherwise reached.

J: So much of your work has a strong emphasis on the impact of technology on pop culture. What sparked your interest in this?

H: Well, if you go way back, when I first started broken Broken Pencil, I was mostly focused on fiction, and my interest was in celebrating “weird writing”. But then I started analyzing what sort of material people were putting into the underground culture. That’s what got me thinking about how the technology of mass media was affecting what people thought about themselves, and how they injected themselves into the world.

J: Your last non-fiction book, Trees On Mars, deals with what you describe as a wave of unfounded optimism that is sweeping our world— a prevailing belief that the future will be better, and that technological innovation will solve our problems. You talk about the dangers of this ideology, and the need to overcome it. Are you optimistic this will happen?

H: No, I’m not optimistic at all. I’m what you might call a pessimistic optimist, in the sense that I don’t believe we are going to make many meaningful changes in our society. We use technology to increase the speed of our consumption. I don’t think any of that is going to change.

But I think there is optimism to be found in telling the story of how we became who we became. Not because we’re going to change, but because the really redeeming part of humanity is our capacity to tell stories. If there is any redemption, it’ll perhaps in some future society, probably of sentient cockroaches (laughter).

J: So would it be fair to describe the book as a critique of the Enlightenment worldview?

H: Yes, but also the post-industrial idea of mass consumption. The idea that giving people the trappings of a comfortable life will lead to a kind of happiness. That really hasn’t happened.

In all my work, there’s a connection to the story of how people live. The story is what is important to me. So while Trees on Mars is vitriolic, it does introduce you to these endearing, if occasionally misguided characters. Real people who are trying to take the messages that come through our mass media, who are trying to make themselves whole with them.

That’s what the characters are trying to do in The Archaeologists. Throughout all my work, there’s this sort of great melancholy longing— it’s the longing for a sense of wholeness, a sort of community that the postmodern person has lost in clawing their way towards a perfect suburban life.

J: Well, this is all quite grim.

H: (Laughter) Am I scaring you John?

J: (Laughter) A little. But you did mention storytelling as a bright point in the human condition. So going back to our theme of “Digital Creativity: Culture Reimagined”, would you say that technology has at least helped us tell better stories?

H: Hmm, I don’t think I would say that. I would say that culture and technology are… almost irrelevant to each other in many ways. Technology can be used to tell good stories or bad stories. They can be used to ramp up hatred, or to spread propaganda. For me, modern technology is a neutral entity in the sense that anything can go through it.

If we look at the history of the story, there was the oral tradition, mostly songs and poems. Then there was the handwritten tradition, in which laboriously copied texts were handed down. And then we move to the printing press in the 15th century, which was the first significant break. With the printing press, we shifted away from the local view of culture, the view that these stories are the lifeforce of society: what we tell each other to make sense of our society. We shifted to the view that stories are just part of entertainment, a commodity.

So if we look at what the culture is today, we see a culture that is being pushed out ever faster and in more frantic bursts. I don’t think we can say that this is a better story. We can certainly say that there is a lot more story… which is line with the consumptive imperative. This isn’t necessarily bad, but it requires a wholly different way of understanding culture.

J: So, I guess that bring us to the present. Intellectual property regulation has strengthened significantly over the last few years, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to enforce. What role do you think the law has in promoting creativity in the 21st century?

H: I don’t think I can fully answer the question. But as an artist, as a creator, I regularly receive updates that my book is now up on some torrent website (laughter).

But nowadays, people have this penchant that if you can’t protect your work, then no one would buy it. But at the same time, that is only true when you look at it in the context of a consumptive society. The people who feel close to me, who feel like we’re part of one community, are going to buy the book regardless of whether they can get it for free. And the people who see me as a commodity, and my works as another consumptive object, are going to steal it regardless.

So from the writer’s perspective, we need to do everything we can to create that sense of community. If we can’t do that, then we’re just another faceless person who’s trying to scramble up the ladder. One of my main goals behind the online serialization of The Archaeologists prior to publication is to build a sense of community. To offer up something for free, and after serialization, ask the readers to decide if they want to support a member of their community who has offered this to them.

So getting to the issue of the law, I think there is no real blueprint for this. We’re in uncharted territory. We need to recognize that there has to be a lot of flexibility in helping creators achieve their goals. So can lawyers also think this way? Can they help create a legal framework in which creators can operate as they’d like to operate? I think the whole legal system needs to be very careful in what they’re advocating for, because there is a very complicated relationship in all of this. It’s not just an issue of better laws in terms of protecting creators— it may be the case that the creators don’t want laws that prevent them from operating the way the way they want to operate, and creating what they want to create.

Hal Niedzviecki’s new novel, The Archaeologists, can be read .

John C.H. Wu is an IPilogue Editor and a JD Candidate at Osgoode hall Law School.

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Movies – A Global Passion

This year, the World IP Day theme is: Movies – A Global Passion.

As WIPO Director General, Francis Gurry stated at the U.S. Copyright Office's “early” celebration of World IP Day on April 23, 2014, “movies really are collections of intellectual property.” Gurry also said, “intellectual property ensures we have a global production of movies that rewards all of those who are involved in the production of movies.”

IP is of course essential to the film business, from the inception of a film throughout the process, including the film hitting the screen. For more information, see 

What Role for You on World IP Day?

Organizations around the world are seizing the opportunity to educate others about IP and the people and process involved in creating IP.  You too could join in and host a film festival, organize a concert, or exhibit inventions of local inventors. WIPO makes several of activities you can do.�� These activities include:

• Mounting a public exhibition displaying how consumers benefit from IP
• Organizing a workshop to educate specific users such as artists, musicians and inventors about how IP rights benefit them
• Promoting IP through social media
• Running a photo contest to manifest creativity and the working of copyright in practice
• Creating and distributing World IP Day publicity materials such as posters, brochures, etc., for specific audiences

WIPO can help if you are planning a public outreach campaign. Its site suggests that you establish your campaign with specific objectives, you identify the target audience, research the best way of getting the word out to your audience and develop a plan to get that word out. For more information, see .

Spreading the IP Word

A celebration of World IP Day could be as simple as discussing downloading music with your children around the dinner table. Or sharing with a colleague a URL to an article about legally using trade-marks. Or posting a message on your Facebook page about others obtaining permission to use your photos. Whether we create or use IP, it is easy to see how IP is an integral part of our daily lives. And it seems that IP has grown so quickly to encompass even more of our activities.

One of my favourite quotes about understanding copyright law and “spreading the copyright message” comes from U.S. Register for Copyright, Maria Pallante, where she states that copyright is a life skill:

It’s one of those life skills now, right? When you graduate from high school or college, you should know how to read a map, you should know how to use GPS, you should know a little bit about copyright. If you are somebody who is going to be in a field where you will encounter copyrighted materials all the time, you should know more. If you’re going to be an artist or musician and you’re getting a red-hot degree in the performing arts, you should know a lot. And I don’t think that’s quite the case - I don’t think it’s been built into the curricula.

Do you know a little bit about IP or more? And what can you do today to help your friends, families and colleagues understand how IP affects us all?

Lesley is a lawyer, author, educator, and Osgoode  (’85). Her book, , was recently published by Wiley. You can read more of Lesley’s posts at .��

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This year's theme is "Visionary Innovators" and it seeks to celebrate the role that innovators play in the creation of Intellectual Property. As WIPO Director General Francis Gurry noted in his , innovators are "people whose innovations transform our lives.�� Their impact is enormous.�� They can, at times, change the way society operates."

In his annual address, the Director general also discusses the importance of maintaining a proper balance between the incentivizing innovators to create, and public interest in sharing useful innovations. He notes that "we have to get the balances right, and that is why it is so important to talk about intellectual property.�� On this World Intellectual Property Day I would encourage young people in particular to join in the discussion, because intellectual property is, by definition, about change, about the new.�� It is about achieving the transformations that we want to achieve in society."

In Canada, the (CIPO) has set up . The website includes tips for making IP a part of your business, information on IP for students, success stories of famous innovators, and additional information on the history and importance of World IP Day.  There is also a fun "IP Basics Quiz" where visitors can test their knowledge of various fields of intellectual property.

For more information about World Intellectual Property Day, you can visit the , or join in the conversation yourself at the .

Mark Kohras is a JD student at Osgoode Hall Law School. For IP Osgoode's coverage of last year's World IP Day event, see .

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