Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2019

Publisher

Centre for International Governance Innovation

City

Waterloo, Ont.

Abstract

Intellectual property (IP) legal clinics play a crucial role in helping Canadian inventors and entrepreneurs bring their inventions to market while strengthening the foundations of the country’s innovation ecosystem. IP legal clinics provide pro bono IP information and assistance to under-resourced inventors who are not served by the profession. At the same time, when based at law schools, these clinics provide experiential learning opportunities to law students who want to work in the IP profession, which contributes to their career development and increases their legal and interpersonal acumen. These client and student-facing goals improve the ability of Canadians to recognize, protect and exploit intangible assets through IP commercialization strategies, skills that have proven necessary for Canadian businesses to succeed at home and abroad. The financial constraints faced by startups and small and medium-sized entities (SMEs) are especially acute in a specialized field such as IP law, where patent costs are prohibitive and can cost upwards of $20,000. The inability to protect and strategize a company’s IP due to such costs have long-standing consequences when not addressed early in the commercialization process.

Comments

"This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution — Non-commercial — No Derivatives License. To view this license, visit (www.creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). For re-use or distribution, please include this copyright notice."

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