Ontario’s Intellectual Property Strategy: Supporting the Knowledge-based Economy

Conference Report

June 6, 2018

This report is a summary of discussions held on August 31, 2017, at a round table organized by the Centre for International Governance Innovation’s International Law Research Program, together with the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science, and the Ministry of Economic Development and Growth. The round table was the fourth in a series that had previously addressed intellectual property (IP) awareness and outreach, weak IP literacy among Canadian entrepreneurs, technology transfer at Canadian universities, sovereign patent funds and the absence of a national IP strategy. The latest round table sessions highlighted the development of Ontario’s Scale-Up Strategy and the best framework for IP strategizing. Issues underlying the discussions included challenges for scale-ups (high-growth companies) and how best to generate domestic IP that is salient in both international and domestic markets.

About the Authors

Oonagh E. Fitzgerald was director of international law at CIGI from April 2014 to February 2020. In this role, she established and oversaw CIGI’s international law research agenda, which included policy-relevant research on issues of international economic law, environmental law, IP law and innovation, and Indigenous law.

Bassem Awad is a senior fellow and was previously the deputy director of International Intellectual Property Law and Innovation at CIGI.

Marsha Simone Cadogan is a CIGI senior fellow specializing in intellectual property, trade and technology law.