Life skills and career tips for Canada's lawyers in training
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/552038
32 F A L L 2 0 1 5 C A N A D I A N L a w y e r 4 S T U D E N T S Practising Intellectual property law PROS: + • Size of the bar: e IP bar in St. John's is tiny. In fact, there are only nine of us actively practising in the area that I know of and, of that nine, three are in-house and only fi ve are registered trademark agents. As a result, we all know each other and frequently work on the opposite side of disputes or work together to educate the market. It makes for a collegial atmosphere and easy communication. Being a bit of a big fi sh in a small pond has given me the opportunity to take the lead on some really great fi les. • Keeping current: Memberships in the CBA and IPIC make it easy to attend webinars and to meet fellow IP practitioners from across the country and around the world. I usually attend a couple of IP-specifi c conferences each year and have developed a list of contacts I can use to test general ideas and strategies. It is nice to get away and immerse myself in IP every now and then. • Outsourcing: Law fi rms in St. John's have lower overhead than fi rms in larger urban centres. Because IP legislation has federal application, we can service our clients from across the country more economically than a Bay Street fi rm can. We are like the India of Canada when it comes to IP. CONS: – • I practise copyright, trademark, entertainment, and privacy law. As a result of the lack of local lawyers who practise in these areas, many of NL's SMEs and cultural industries have developed without a legal aspect. For example, St. John's is bursting at the seams with artists, writers, and musicians, but very few of these talented individuals have ever put any thought into how copyright might impact their careers. It is changing but slowly. • e provincial government is encouraging business owners to trademark their business names and consider developing an IP strategy. • Educating the marketplace is a huge endeavour and takes up a signifi cant amount of my time. I give a lot of presentations to existing clients and the public on the basic principles of IP law. PROS: + • Some areas of intellectual property practice, especially patent practice, are highly technical; practitioners o en work with cutting-edge inventions or designs, which requires us to think like engineers, scientists or designers. • It can be tremendously satisfying to help clients protect meritorious ideas and creations, both because the subject matter is interesting and because protection rewards clients for their research and development. • All sizes of businesses have IP needs, so practitioners can have a wide variety of clients, from garage-based inventors and mom-and-pop shops to multinational brands. • Practitioners who focus on IP prosecution (which is largely non-adversarial) deal with deadlines set months or years in advance, which helps to keep work schedules relatively consistent and predictable. CONS: – • Prospective IP practitioners must pass the notoriously diffi cult patent and/or trademark agent exams to practise; pass rates are in the low single digits. • IP practice tends to involve a high volume of fi les, which can result in numerous overlapping deadlines. • Patent dra ing in particular is full of procedural pitfalls and requires practitioners to be hyper-accurate; a single typo or inadvisable turn of phrase in a 100-page document can lead to a loss of rights for your client (and potentially signifi cant liability for you). CHRISTOPHER C. SCOTT, Oyen Wiggs Green & Mutala LLP, Vancouver ERIN E. BEST, Trademark agent, Stewart McKelvey, St. John's Practising Intellectual property law