We hope you enjoyed your summer and would like to welcome you back to another exciting academic year at IP Osgoode! As we navigate these challenging times and hope to see many of you in person again in the coming months, our commitment to your learning and growth remains stronger than ever.
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 IPilogue 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 (The IPIGRAM) readership continue to grow exponentially and span the globe. Our diverse IPilogue Team 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 subscribe to the IPIGRAM and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
We are recruiting IPilogue Writers 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 here.
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 launched our AI-powered IP Innovation ChatBot, 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 ChatBot 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 here.
The IP Innovation Clinic continues to expand our client base and provide our students with a valuable and unique experiential learning opportunity. We are currently recruiting Clinic Fellows 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 Research Assistants for the 2021/22 academic year, 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 second-place finish at last year’s Oxford Moot, 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 IP Intensive program 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 David Vaver 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 Bracing for Impact Conference Series 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: “COVID-19 Contact Tracing: Legal and Ethical Challenges” (22 June 2020), “Cyber Challenges to Human Rights” (1 December 2020), and “AI’s Dirty Footprint” (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 website. 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 Past Events page and subscribing to our weekly e-Newsletter, the IPIGRAM.
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 announced on the IP Osgoode website. Eligibility for the 2021-2022 Gowling Prize 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 Canada’s IP Writing Challenge 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.