A team of students representing York University's Osgoode Hall Law School placed second at the 2017 International Patent Drafting Competition held in Detroit, Feb. 10 and 11.
Paul Blizzard, Denver Bandstra and Lawrence Yu were among the student teams from across Canada and the U.S. to compete in the challenge.
The contest, hosted by the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, Windsor Law, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, requires students to respond to a hypothetical invention disclosure from a hypothetical inventor. Teams were asked to complete a search based on the disclosure, put together search results, and draft and application with a set of claims, according to Clinic Director Wissam Aoun.
Competitors from 10 law schools from across the U.S. and Canada presented their patent applications in front of patent examiners, practitioners and several judges.
The competition saw Team Osgoode make it to the final round where they tied with Saint Louis University (SLU) on final scoring. In the sudden death round, they lost to SLU by only one point.
Team Osgoode was coached by Ken Bousfield and Nicholas Aitken of Bereskin & Parr LLP and was generously sponsored by the firm.