Canadian Lawyer

May 2008

The most widely read magazine for Canadian lawyers

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Ottawa's legal scene is characterized by a history of lawmaking but is also a hotbed of new forms of technology. BY CHRISTOPHE R GULY Blending tradition and I n a city where Parliament has en- acted laws since the 19th century and businesses have been creat- ing new forms of technology for the 21st century, Ottawa's legal community is characterized by a blend of tradition and innovation. For more than a century, the city was the centre of the intellectual property bar in Canada, by virtue of its geographical location in the nation's capital. The admin- istration and processing of copyrights, trademarks, pat- ents, and industrial designs were all done in Ottawa, and judges of the Exchequer Court of Canada — the forerunner of today's Federal Court and its appellate counterpart — held all of its hearings in the city. The small cluster of Otta- wa lawyers specializing in IP constituted much of the bar in that field. "Most business came from law firms. We used to do all their IP work," says Jonathan Cohen, who has practised law since 1971 and is managing partner of Shapiro Cohen, an Ottawa IP firm whose roots date back to 1963, when the late Norman Shapiro established the 40 M AY 2008 www. C ANADIAN mag.com practice. Cohen says before the 1980s there were no more than 30 firms across the country specializing in patents and trademarks, most of them centred in Ot- tawa, with a few in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. Today, he estimates there are five times as many, with Toronto now outpacing Ottawa with the number of firms dedicated to IP practice. The surge and resulting shift from Jonathan Cohen Parliament Hill and environs to Bay Street was the result of the Federal Court becoming more mobile, along with tech- nological change and business opportu- nities, says Cohen. "Things like the introduction of the fax and video recorders led to copyright issues, and the fo- cus became on international trade and opening new mar- kets," he explains. "The rec- ognition by businesses and governments of the value of their intellectual property became more the focus of many of the most successful companies in the world." Yet Ottawa firms that specialize in IP — as well as its younger cousins, in- formation technology and communica- tions — still hold enough clout on Can- ada's legal landscape that their boutique practices have attracted the expansion interests of larger Toronto firms. That happened on April 1, 2007, with Ottawa communications law firm Johnston &

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