Intellectual property

Our intellectual property practice group can guide you through the intricacies of these notions and offer sound advice to protect these assets. Intellectual property is a competitive tool in positioning your company in the market, and we know this. The strategic protection of such assets is essential to their valuation and exploitation. Did you know that they have a value and can be bought, sold, granted as collateral during financing, and even be a source of income? Today, for a majority of companies, intellectual property represents between 60 and 85% of their total commercial value.

The value associated with these assets generally represents the result of sustained efforts to grow goodwill and a major investment in time and resources. A wise protection is one that covers such assets from conception to commercialization to get maximum return and to prevent your competitors from benefiting unduly from your efforts and investments.

Did you perform a due diligence investigation of those assets prior to your business merger or acquisition? Did you know that the intellectual property rights are territorial and that if they are not registered abroad, they might not be protected? Once you have disclosed an industrial design or patent, do you know the time limit for filing an application to protect your rights? Do your contracts with suppliers provide provisions regarding those assets? Did you know that in the absence of a written assignment, in the deliverables, the copyrights remain the property of your services and content suppliers? Will you be able to set the conditions for users’ use of your technologies while maintaining control over such assets? How will you manage intellectual property rights that arise from co-development?

Whether you are looking for general support in deploying a strategy or for a specific legal opinion on a precise intellectual property issue, the members of our group are available to meet and discuss this with you. We offer a wide variety of services related to the protection (upstream of an infringement on your born or future rights) and the defence (downstream of an alleged infringement on your rights) of these intangible assets and their value. Our group has professionals dedicated to identifying your needs and to developing an adapted strategy to protect and defend your rights.

We also advise companies on regulatory matters such as labelling, language issues relating to the Charter of the French language of Quebec, regulations on alcohol, horse races, and games, agri-food protection for reserved designations of origin, geographical indications, reserved designations, added value terms, plant breeders, domain names, etc.

Intellectual property rights arise from creative and innovative activities in the technological, scientific, industrial, manufacturing, literary and artistic fields. Some are protected by filing applications for registration, others by entering into well-drawn up confidentiality agreements. Contact us, we are here to get you there.

Sub-expertises in intellectual property

Our specialized intellectual property law team offers, among others, the following services:

• Trademark availability search and registrability;
• Strategic assistance in the trademark registering process in Canada and internationally;
• Trademark portfolio management (renewals, amendments, and protection whether by expungement or opposition proceedings, or an infringement lawsuit);
• Strategic advice in registering copyrights, chains of titles search, and defence of these rights in the event of unauthorized reproduction and other acts reserved for the copyright owner;
• Registration of industrial designs, including the search, filing and response to the Examination report process in Canada and the United States;
• Industrial designs portfolio management (renewals, amendements, and protection);
• Drafting and negotiation of agreements on any type of intellectual property asset (licences, confidentiality agreements, distribution contracts, procurement contracts, franchise agreements, software development agreements, software as a service agreements (”SaaS Agreements”);
• Advice and legal opinions on any type of intellectual property assets;
• Drafting agreements to protect trade secrets for work or for senior management;
• Advice and legal opinions on image rights issues;
• Representations before the Trademarks Opposition Board, the Federal Court and civil and administrative courts;
• Negotiations for commercializing your assets or regarding your rights against allegations of infringement of third-party rights;
• Indigenous traditional knowledge, collective heritage, and cultural expressions

Such services are complimentary to those offered by our business law team and by our team on matters relating to access, protection of personal information and privacy.