Two IPs In A Pod
Brilliant inventions, fresh product designs, iconic brand names and artistic creativity are not only the building blocks of successful business - they deliver a better world for us all. But these valuable forms of intellectual property must be protected in order to flourish. We are the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys - the UK's largest intellectual property organisation. Our hosts Lee Davies and Gwilym Roberts chat with entrepreneurs, creatives, patent attorneys and the occasional judge about how patents, trade marks, designs and copyright can improve our lives and solve problems for humanity.
Two IPs In A Pod
INTA San Diego Special with... IPIC
This episode captures a fascinating conversation between UK and Canadian intellectual property experts exploring the unique challenges and innovations in their respective IP systems.
The discussion dives deep into Canada's uncertain landscape for patentable subject matter, where inconsistent case law and examiner interpretations create significant headaches for businesses seeking protection. Unlike Europe's relatively settled approach, Canadian companies often face unpredictability that hampers strategic planning, as one guest puts it, sometimes patent outcomes depend on "the particular examiner's mood that day."
I've been a treasurer and it's the worst year in the organisation's history.
Speaker 3:It's a lot of nerve-wracking.
Speaker 2:Was it your fault Completely.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely. Lee Davis and Gwilym Roberts are the two IPs in a pod and you are listening to a podcast on intellectual property brought to you by the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys. Brought to you by the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys.
Speaker 5:Final podcast of this little session. Feeling all right, I saw you flagging, but we've done the flagging joke, haven't we?
Speaker 1:I've just been told off for something I did in the last podcast, so I'm just bruised.
Speaker 5:Oh sorry, that's all right, I'm over it.
Speaker 1:It wasn't really a telling off, no, it was just a reminder that you can't say some stuff yeah, totally legitimately.
Speaker 5:It's something I like to do. I feel hurt now, in case I've offended you. We're an amazing team.
Speaker 1:I was going to mention something that sets you up with a really good joke. Oh, I can Do. You expect me to tell it on time? No, no, no, I've just come across a new thing. When you go to a shop, I got told I'd done a bad tap. Bad tap, and you got really excited immediately.
Speaker 5:Yeah, because I was going to get my bag of washers out and kind of give you a little fix.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but no, it was. I didn't tap the machine properly. It just says bad tap, bad tap. I know. Again, I feel that all day I'm bruised everywhere I go. I'm just getting bad.
Speaker 5:You've not had the best week, have you? No, and it's only Monday. And I think when you read, it is Monday, isn't it? It is, yeah, it's ridiculous, isn't it?
Speaker 1:When you say bad tap, you feel like did I not tap properly? Was it me, Was it?
Speaker 5:my tapping. You've got this far on in your life where you don't know how to tap.
Speaker 1:I don't know how to tap.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so I was quite disappointed by it. You get a bit of that as well under 10%. Maybe we can talk about tipping.
Speaker 1:I just tipped 77 cents to pick a banana out of a basket 77 cents.
Speaker 5:Was that to make it up to a round figure?
Speaker 1:no, I don't know what it is when they give you those numbers and I press the wrong button. I tipped the people for being near a banana and there it is for anyone who's listening?
Speaker 5:if people still are listening to this podcast, I have a banana. It is. Here's the banana. Here's the banana.
Speaker 6:For anyone who's listening. If people still are listening to this podcast, I have a banana.
Speaker 1:I have a banana.
Speaker 5:Don't understand. It is the banana, isn't it?
Speaker 1:This is mine, that's the banana. I feel like I should have had the 77 cents. Oh, there we go. Do you want to have the banana?
Speaker 5:No, so this is again one of our. We always say sister, I don't know if that's right, is it sibling? Because it could be. I mean, our organisations are gender neutral, aren't they? So yes, they are, aren't they? So, yeah, sibling organisations, our friends in Canada, who we have a brilliant relationship with. In fact, we have a. We have a delegation going over to visit EPIC in Ottawa in June, which we're really, really looking forward to. So it's great to have three colleagues on the podcast. Do you want to introduce yourselves, and where should we start? Should we start with? So again, everyone is pointing at one another, joanne go first Alright, why not my name's?
Speaker 3:Joanne Nardi? I'm a trademark agent. I am on the board of Epic as treasurer. This year They've let me count the money, which is very exciting.
Speaker 5:Do you have to keep the money?
Speaker 3:Just count it Sadly, just count it. Very distressing. Anyway, I have my own firm in Toronto. Before I started my own firm I worked for years at Molson Coors, so I've got my big beard I was over in the UK regularly up at Burton-on-Trent.
Speaker 5:So in terms of the way, because I can never really remember how the officer roles work at EPIC, is the treasurer role a route to something else? Are you on the journey? I am?
Speaker 3:on the journey. You're on the journey yes, it's my first year on the executive. I was on the board a few years ago and was asked to join the executive this year. So, treasurer, is the first, then you get secretary vice president, president, past president.
Speaker 1:It's really choice enough being a treasurer, being a treasurer. I've been a treasurer and it's the worst year in the organization's history.
Speaker 3:Well, it's a lot of nerve-wracking, but was it your fault Completely.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 4:Louis-Pierre, you started talking, so you might as well introduce yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because Excel didn't work, so Louis-Pierre Ravel. I'm a past president of Epic, so they've taken me out of the closet and dusted me and brought me here. I work for a firm called Dipchand in Toronto. Although I live in Montreal, I don't have any plans on moving to Toronto. Although I live in Montreal, I don't have any plans on moving to Toronto and involved in a few other organizations, among which is FICB, which Willem knows, as well as GLIPA, which is another organization we can ultimately have a conversation about at some point.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm making notes.
Speaker 6:Last but not least Krishna. Hello everyone, krishna Patil. I am actually Silicon Valley based, although also a Canadian. I am an IP strategist, patent lawyer and engineer. Yeah, and I've got a long history with my friend here, gwilym. It's been over what?
Speaker 1:almost 25 years, gwilym, oh that's amazing and you've been part of one of the most famous, world famous Canadian IP stories ever.
Speaker 6:Of course, yeah, so my career started pretty early with BlackBerry, or it was called Research in Motion in those days, yeah, yeah, right, and we started this rather tiny little patent portfolio and kind of grew it to quite a large organization, let's say that, and had the fortune to work with a number of different colleagues, including Pierre here as well, and I thought I knew everyone in the IP practice in Canada. Only today I met Joanne for the first time, so it's wonderful to meet you.
Speaker 3:Well and it's funny because I thought I knew everyone too it just goes to show there's more people to meet.
Speaker 6:Yeah, so I've got a few little projects underway this year. I'm now a board member of the Intellectual Asset Collective in Canada. Yes, so I'm helping to drive some leadership in the IP space. Right now, the member companies are in the data-driven clean tech space. The member companies are in the data-driven clean tech space. It's basically trying to scale up the IP acumen of small and medium-sized enterprises in Canada that are going to look more globally in the future and make sure that they're much more IP-savvy in the future.
Speaker 5:So where's a good place to start the conversation? As I said, I think, earlier, we're on our way over to visit you folks in June, really really looking forward to it. We've a small delegation coming to talk about things like upc litigation, education, uh, other other topics, so we could sort of circle around some of those. We know privilege is a big issue for you in canada at the moment. We also know that there's not a lot of progress in that, probably since the last time we spoke about it. We also know you've come up to your centenary, aren't you? So that's all very exciting. We might have plans to do something for you in that regard, which we're not going to disclose here, but I just wanted to drop a little. Even you don't know what my plans are, do you?
Speaker 1:I'm free of fish and chips supper.
Speaker 5:And mushy peas. Just wanted to drop a little teaser into the conversation. I just wanted to drop a little teaser into the conversation. Where do you want to go with the conversation? Where should we start?
Speaker 2:We can certainly talk about patentable subject matter, which is one of those perennial issues we have in Canada. We do know that recently the Senators Coombe and Tillis in the United States reintroduced the PERA and PREVAIL Acts, which aim to undo some of the damage that the Supreme Court in the US has done on Section 101. And I think we're hopeful that in Canada, if those do pass, it's going to have a ripple effect in finally convincing the Canadian IP office to have a more sober look on patentable subject matter and not stick to what I consider to be artificial and outdated ideas about what should and should not be protectable by patents in Canada.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. So obviously I've taken the view that Europe's settled its position and been challenged by a large board to appear at the UPR and come back and still settle its position. Uk courts not maybe quite so advanced. Advanced, but there's a lot of certainty around. Is that not the situation in canada?
Speaker 2:no, there's a little bit of uncertainty still about it. I mean, the supreme court of canada chimed in on the issue 25 years ago in both the harvard mouse case and the schmeisser versus monsanto cases. Since then there have been trial division decisions and appeals decisions that are, frankly, inconsistent and irreconcilable, and for the time being, the Supreme Court has refused to entertain additional challenges to these sections, and so it's still uncertain. And generally, the patent bar in Canada I think is an agreement to say that the position adopted by the Canadian IP office is inconsistent with the case law, and they've pushed back on a number of cases and said no, no, no, we think that we've got the right solution and that's how we're going to continue doing it Okay.
Speaker 1:So certainty always makes a big difference, doesn't it? I mean, just advising in an uncertain environment makes it so tricky. Businesses don't want it.
Speaker 2:Well, they don't want to have that uncertainty. They want to have predictability and when. Ultimately, the decision as to whether or not your patent application is going to succeed rests on the particular examiner that's going to be examining your case, and because we're all humans, sometimes their mood that day can affect the way they look at things. It's very frustrating.
Speaker 1:Joanne, what's your area of expertise then?
Speaker 3:I'm trademarks. I help a lot of companies a lot of hot energy fractional in-house outside. Help them set up their IP departments and get themselves organised when they've gone from small little sleepy companies to suddenly being billion dollar brands, and they're trying to catch up so I end up doing that, not where I thought my career would go, but it's been a really fun experience and I tend to do a really fun experience.
Speaker 1:I tend to do a lot of it, but you're not the imposter of Inter, though, so INTA, what do we call it?
Speaker 5:Apparently, we can use either. Okay, fine.
Speaker 1:Either, so you're among 10,000 close friends.
Speaker 3:Yes, I am. That's quite nice. I'm not a fake trademark person and how many?
Speaker 5:oh, oh, willem, yeah, oh.
Speaker 4:I like that, that's you. That is, that's so it. It's so it, that's not a problem.
Speaker 1:How long have you been coming to the conference?
Speaker 3:my first one was in 1996 or 7 in Boston wow so a long time yeah. I haven't come. Every year I got married. One year I had a baby. Another year I every year I got married. One year I had a baby another year.
Speaker 1:Great taste, huh? Reasonable excuses, yeah, oh, that's interesting. Tell me, what change do you see?
Speaker 3:Oh, it's just massive now, you know, when I first came in Boston, I think it was like 2,000 registrants. Really and everybody sort of did. You know, everybody went to the opening ceremonies, everybody went to all the receptions and now it's just such a Quite. Honestly, it's just a place for us to all meet at the same time each year. But the conference itself it's almost a victim of its own success. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:It's exhaustingly large, isn't it yes?
Speaker 1:I think it's the way things are going to go, though Personally, I think conferences have changed their role, because when I started going to conferences, it really was to network and meet new people and maybe get a little bit of business or find an attorney in a country you didn't really know, so that you could build a relationship to send work, whatever it might be. That you could build a relationship to send work, whatever it might be, whereas now it's just so big that you can't really rely on serendipity. We were looking at the networking space, the speed networking space over there.
Speaker 1:That's quite challenging. There's big numbers and you've got to meet at number seven and all B at such and such a time to meet a new person and swap cards and things.
Speaker 5:Can I ask Joe a quick question about so? In the UK, whilst we don't major in trademarks, we obviously work quite closely with uh charter trade mark attorneys. We do, uh they've got a bit of a campaign going on at the moment with the uk intellectual property office around over, let's say, overseas attorneys from certain jurisdictions who, because there are no, there are no limits on who can represent before the UK IPO and file a trademark application, we're getting quite a lot of flooding of the trademark register with brand names that are lots of unlinked letters, maybe Similar in Canada, not as much.
Speaker 3:I mean you do have to be licensed by the College of Patent and Trademark Agents to practice before.
Speaker 5:So there is a link between registration and practicing before the yes yes, so that's helpful, but foreign trademark lawyers can be members.
Speaker 3:I don't actually quite know how that works, because that's something I'm not to worry about. It's been a big issue in the US. You could really see the flood of applications a few years ago coming from, you know, various countries and just everything and for every goods and service, and it's just. It's insane, and a lot of marks on the register that are just they're not being used, they're not being used for everything, and it's just. You know the register has become really cluttered and that's that happens in canada as well, especially with no use requirements it just makes the system sluggish, doesn't it?
Speaker 3:it slows everything down yeah, yeah, although in canada they've started um non-use proceedings. Always used to be a third party would have to request them, okay. And now cepO has started a pilot program whereby they're just randomly picking trademarks and so they're doing a bit of due diligence and yeah.
Speaker 1:How's that been received?
Speaker 3:Not well.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. I mean I want to talk a bit more about policy and governments getting involved in innovation and so on, but this is a good starting point for that. So from the outside it sounds like they're stepping in for policy reasons to help un-future a registry because no one else is doing it, but it sounds like it's not going down quite like that Depends who you are.
Speaker 3:I think it's a great idea. I really do. I also don't have clients that have been getting these letters and they're annoyed by it Especially you know. I don't know how they decide. Do you know how they decide what they're going to?
Speaker 2:I think it's completely random.
Speaker 3:I think it is random, so it's not a question of doing any due diligence.
Speaker 2:It's just a question of.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's no due diligence.
Speaker 2:Picking something out of a bowl and saying, oh, let's send a letter to this one.
Speaker 3:So if I was Coca I've got a non-use proceeding against Coke. I'd be a little annoyed about that, but I really do think it's completely random. I do hope that if something like that came up they'd be like it's in the vending machine down the hall.
Speaker 1:we know it's in the vending machine, and is that why it's not popular? Because of the randomness.
Speaker 3:I think that's why?
Speaker 1:yeah, Okay, it's not government overreach or something like that.
Speaker 3:Okay, it's not government overreach or something like that. No, I'm sure there's some of that too.
Speaker 2:It's not too much, but I think it's mostly the randomness and it's a change also in the behavior of the applicants and the agents in Canada, because, as Joanne said earlier, traditionally it was a third party that would institute a kind of proceeding like this because you're feeling some sort of threat or you need to clear the register. Now it's just out of the blue they send out these letters, and so the applicants and the agents themselves are surprised by this initiative that's piloted by the office.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which doesn't seem to have you know echo in other jurisdictions.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I've not heard of anything like that in the UK?
Speaker 1:No, absolutely not. I was going to roll on with that about where the role of the office is and everything like that. And, krishna, you're saying, with the intellectual asset collective in Canada, innovation, oh sorry, intellectual asset collective, thank you. And again, that's kind of looking. The use of IP in Canada, how does that fit in with IPIC? How does it fit in with the CIPO?
Speaker 6:So I think it's rooted in a number of companies who've tried to scale beyond the Canadian borders and recognizing that sometimes the IP side units of some of our high-tech companies that are in this kind of trajectory of growth don't necessarily develop in sync with their IP as they have with their business growth. So then there's a disconnect right where they've got this growth trajectory but they don't have the underlying IP protected. That's, you know, fueled that growth. So you know, the federal government started the institution a few years ago.
Speaker 6:It's mostly an experiment to see if, in this particular space of data-driven clean tech, if member companies that are in this space can develop a heightened level of IP savviness. It comes from training, encouraging them to file patents, getting them a full 360 of IP development, procurement and development and hopefully the ability for these companies to go off and develop outside of Canada and exploit their technology in a successful way that doesn't have this overhang of IP risk. And part of this organization includes things like patent acquisitions, getting assets that can be used by member companies. This is very much an experiment to demonstrate, to see if this is something that can scale beyond the particular technology areas. I think it's interesting and I think countries like the UK have something like the patent box, if I remember correctly. So countries like Canada are looking to other jurisdictions to see what's proven to be successful, what doesn't work, and this is, let's say, a model that's being tested out.
Speaker 2:And in parallel with the initiative of the government in the IAC, the federal government also rolled out two other programs.
Speaker 2:One is called IP Assist and the other one is called Elevate IP, and both programs follow a very similar structure, which is what they call level one, or just an introduction to IP basics. And then level two is funds to help the companies craft at least an initial IP strategy. So at least start with doing an audit, some basic searching, look at some contractual issues and sort of map out how this IP strategy can help propel the business strategy of the company. Level three was monies for the implementation of that strategy, so in certain cases they would actually fund the drafting and the filing of patent applications, not just in the US but around the world. And so I think from that perspective the Canadian government really finally recognized that there is a knowledge gap in SMEs and in even larger companies across the country, and we need to address that, Because if we're going to, as with other countries, really shift our economies to a knowledge economy, then that necessarily has to go through IP and IP assets and the protection and defense of them.
Speaker 5:And is that support at each of those three levels? Is that no strings attached? So there's no expectation of any kind of flow back through government, of ownership of IP or anything like that? No, no, that's a loaded question for some of the things that we're seeing happening Right.
Speaker 2:So but you know you need to think about it from the government's perspective. What are you trying to achieve? And if you're trying to achieve a change in the behavior of the people, then that's the best way to start doing it, because you're actually giving them money to change their behavior and hopefully the program is going to be long-term enough to be able to affect long-term change. And we're still unsure whether or not any of these programs, which were initial two-, three-year programs, will have any legs in the future. But certainly you can't evaluate the success of a program like that after two years. I mean, it just takes a lot longer to evaluate whether or not you've actually succeeded in changing behavior in the long term.
Speaker 6:That's the challenge behind patents, right, we've got this control loop that takes three, four-plus years before you know you've got an asset that's actually viable in terms of issuance. Then you want to see if it's actually being adopted and has an impact on the industry. The control loop's even further out, seven-plus years, right. So that's like going back to your point. That's one of the predicaments of the patent development process, right, it's one of the predicaments of the patent development process, right? Yeah, it's a hard vehicle to kind of point to in terms of return on investment in a short window of time. You have to look long-term and it's a long-term game here.
Speaker 2:And you're doing a marathon, you're not doing a sprint, right, right, I remember.
Speaker 1:BlackBerry, you had this metric, a pipeline metric, didn't you? I remember that. So, looking at patents rather than waiting for them to get granted, but, quite early on, actually get into valuation, attached to it, basically as it was coming through, which I was quite clever actually for a company with extremely young portfolio, that was the way to do, it, wasn't that?
Speaker 6:yeah, I mean, as companies mature, you develop a whole set of metrics that to kind of quantify your success rate right, one of which is like at that time we were doing kind of metrics applied to all our assets from the day we filed to the journey before it gets issued and post allowance. It's a process that actually has very successfully been employed across different countries and companies this week.
Speaker 1:I think the UK government looks at these things and I know what you were referring to. I'm not going to say too much, no, but I think for me it's interesting how far governments get involved. I think it's really useful.
Speaker 5:The UK proved most on the SME front, isn't it that we're looking, which is a good starting point, of course, but yeah, it's just that the feel that we're getting in the UK of the government is that it's not always no strings attached. There's very often there are sort of in the small print. There are things that perhaps SMEs need to read to fully understand what it's again small for and what the potential consequences might be for that.
Speaker 1:Let's leave it there. Yeah, yeah, but there is some good no strings stuff like IP audits, so basically that you know that really is just go in learn about the company, kind of the early stage point of what you were saying a sense of get in there, learn about it and then give some initial advice, and that's very much no strings. I think that does. Do you have something similar then, to that?
Speaker 2:The IP strategy that the Elevate IP and IP Assist programs cover will do something like that At least. When you're establishing an IP strategy from the beginning, you need to understand where you're starting from. An IP strategy from the beginning. You need to understand where you're starting from, so you need to do an audit of what the company has. And then we've seen also some provinces getting you know, wrapping up some programs.
Speaker 2:In Ontario, for example, ip Ontario is a separate agency of the Ontario government. They also have money to provide for companies no strings attached on IP strategy, landsca, landscaping, searching, freedom to operate and implementation of their ip strategy. The alberta government is starting to look at some of those initiatives and on the other flip side, we someone talked about the patent box earlier, but quebec, the province has a, an ip box program. But you know that I think if you start by providing an ip box, then you're missing out on all the all the stuff that's upstream of that, because in order for you to have an ip box you need to have predictable assets yeah, and you need to file those applications first.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, so it's. It's looking at it a little bit from the the reverse position. Whereas, whereas the Elevate IP and IP Assist and IAC start from the beginning, which is at the innovation step, at the R&D step, how do you map out the next activities going forward?
Speaker 5:Can I ask a policy-related question? You'll know where this is coming from when I develop it very slowly, as I'm just about to. My thinking is very slow, so I have to develop things slowly. I mean, obviously we have an international property office in the UK. It's two things. It's a business in government in that it's selling stuff, it's selling patents and trademarks and the like Not selling them, obviously, but there's no lottery to get one right, allowing people to buy a service from it, and that generates revenue.
Speaker 5:So it's a business in government, but it's also the policy engine of government. So it's trying to do those two things and sometimes there are conflicts in that, I think, or inertias in that. That we see. But what I'm hearing here is there's almost a third dimension, so presumably the cipo is both of those things as well, but also you've got policy at province level. How does all that tie tie together?
Speaker 2:I was thinking I was thinking Good, good, good, and that is one thing we're noticing is that sometimes those initiatives individually are very good, but they're not part of an overarching goal. They're not part of an overarching strategy, which one would think would make a lot of sense. You know, align all your ducks in the same row and map it out. But of course, you know, the provinces are fairly autonomous in some areas, based on the separation of powers that's provided in our constitution, and therefore they want to protect and encourage their own homegrown industries.
Speaker 5:So does that mean that the CIPO is less of a policy influencer in that sense?
Speaker 2:So CIPO has always considered itself to be not a policy influencer. So, they do the administration for the IP rights and they do education as well. But the policy is done within another government department, which we now know as industry, science and economic development, and so they drive the policy aspect that then gets trickled down to CIPO and elsewhere.
Speaker 1:It's really complicated. I think again from my experience in the UK. Our IPO does advise, for example, the innovation IP minister directly and everything like that, but there are other government bodies that also drive the innovation strategy, at least.
Speaker 5:Sometimes it feels like that drive is slow.
Speaker 1:Slow and slightly disconnected, not to be far, by the IPO, where they try very hard to get rid of the middle.
Speaker 5:No, it's the fault of the machinery of government. Yeah, and it's like a power thing.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'll take this down to go for rabbit hole. No, it's a good point. I was going to ask about the centenary, actually, and what the party's going to be like it's going to be in Ottawa.
Speaker 3:And it's at the Chateau Laurier, which was where the very first Patent and Trademark Institute meeting was held a hundred years ago. So they're having it.
Speaker 5:I don't know a lot of details on it yet. Is there a given date? Is there a date for the celebration? You're doing a year-long gig? Is it Like lots of parties? Yeah, is it Lots of parties? It's just never-ending. Well, it'll be during the annual meeting.
Speaker 3:I'm not quite sure what the dates are.
Speaker 5:September-ish time September.
Speaker 3:October-ish.
Speaker 5:I'll be there when you're out there In June. No, no, no. So June is the joined-up leadership meeting that we have where we reciprocate. But, yeah, no, I always try and get along to the annual meeting. Can't get there this year because we've got a class of conferences. We've scheduled ours for the same time.
Speaker 3:Oh, no, yeah, that's why I'm missing out on Saskatoon.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I'm not missing out on trying to get there though.
Speaker 3:No, well, that's more difficult for you.
Speaker 1:yes, no direct flights from Heathrow. No, no, no. I recall the SEPA had a very good band on for their 125th anniversary.
Speaker 5:Yeah, we had a very good band.
Speaker 3:It's a pressure.
Speaker 1:No, we were offering the band oh you were offering the band.
Speaker 3:That's great fun, Interesting. That could help our budget. I mean the treasurer, that's important, so personally you've actually got a different badge on label.
Speaker 6:Tell us about the inventors foundation. Oh wonderful, I'll tell you. Definitely take advantage of this opportunity. So you know, going back to this earlier conversation about these organizations in canada that are helping to basically change the behavior of companies, inventors foundation is really focusing on stepping back even further to change the behavior of inventors, people who the intellectual property like warriors, these intellectual warriors who make our lives possible.
Speaker 6:Yeah, right, we often have this conversation about companies. We seldomly talk about those innovators, those inventors who strip away from their day-to-day practice of engineering or their science engineering work to then work with patent attorneys and other IP professionals. And you know we all recognize that it's sometimes a big chore. In fact, when I was in the council of various different companies, about 30% of our time was convincing the engineers to take time out of their day and work with the patent attorneys and it was a chore. And a big part of that is the recognition element.
Speaker 6:Sometimes they're not necessarily recognized from a performance standpoint that they filed a set of patents. Sometimes the top level managers are not fully recognizing the effort that goes into participating in the patenting process. So this Inventors Foundation is a foundation focused on celebrating and recognizing inventors, their contributions to the ecosystem, the fact that they participate in protecting their innovation through patents or other intellectual property. So you know, especially this day of AI and the fact that AI is getting into the ecosystem of the creation process, I think it's even more important today that we celebrate and recognize that human creativity. And that's what Inventors Foundation is about is to celebrate and put a spotlight on inventors. We're going to be doing storytelling of patents.
Speaker 6:Yeah yeah, yeah. Just to give you an example and we all know this the four corners of these patent documents are sometimes a little bit stale, kind of Not the most readable document. We're going to bring it to life. Do a little bit of storytelling on all the patents. Do interviews with inventors and give them a platform to show off their innovation.
Speaker 5:Yeah, we're a wee bit fortunate there, Raghav, because we have an Earthshot nominator. So we link our work on this with those Earthshot nominations. So we do case studies of the normally kind of green tech startups in the sustainability space. So we'll be doing case studies and telling their stories. But it feels like a similar thing. It's about telling that story Exactly.
Speaker 6:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Although I think we've taken your point. I think we celebrate the company and we have many, many inventors on the inventory, but I'm not sure we completely severed it out. So one of the things we know. I don't think we've ever done this actually is the whole point about reward and incentivization systems. We should probably do some more about that. We've never really talked about it.
Speaker 6:So on that point, gollum, one of our first exercises with this foundation is to do a benchmarking and a case study of what it takes for an inventor to be incentivized to participate in the patenting process. I think all of us have come across some companies who have some sort of remuneration program. Or in our heydays at BlackBerry, we used to have the patent banquet. Hey, if you filed a patent, you were invited to the banquet. And then over years it was okay, you've got a patent issued, you're invited to the banquet.
Speaker 6:Okay you've got three patents issued now you're invited. But of course this just made that. This event became such a who's who event and everyone was elbowing to get into that meeting and doing whatever they could to be invited to the patent banquet. Unfortunately, as important as the banquet was, it's not scalable and many companies who did it have stopped it because it's awfully expensive, not scalable.
Speaker 2:So again, the foundation is there to make sure it's company agnostic, technology agnostic and just laser focus on the inventors and making sure that we celebrate their contribution, and there is a direct correlation, I think, between recognizing the work of the inventors and the success of the company, the underlying company. There's a few companies in Montreal that have these inventors hall of fame walls where everyone that gets a patent or publishes a patent application gets a plaque on a wall and they get together once a month or once twice, three times a year and celebrate the accomplishments of the inventors. And that changes the culture. It really does, because it it provides recognition but also a bit of an impetus to to get your name on that wall. So you want to submit those invention disclosures, yeah.
Speaker 5:You know I'm timekeeper on the podcast. I'm conscious that we're sort of coming towards time. What I did want to ask was when we had, when we did this podcast last year, all eyes were forward on a election and lots of, lots of things being put on the back burner until that election was settled. It's all settled now, isn't it? You're kind of you're in a place of certainty politically. So what's big on the epic radar and what are you going to achieve with the new government?
Speaker 3:well privilege privilege, yeah that's still very much on the table. And then there's some hope that, uh, the strides we made before the parliament was uh dissolved before the election it was positive, wasn't?
Speaker 5:You were in a positive place, yeah yeah, it was looking cautiously optimistic.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, shall we say. And you know, one of the good things about the same party going back into government is they're more likely to pick that up again.
Speaker 5:You're not starting those conversations afresh. Yeah, yeah exactly.
Speaker 3:So you know, we certainly have some hope on that, that, and then there's the usual dealing with SIPO and getting them to change their ways on things that make sense, like you know get rid of your fax machine and give us a Dropbox Things like that.
Speaker 5:We're just going through digital transformation, aren't we? So be careful of what you wish for. Yeah, we're going to get fax machines back. You never know. Go through digital transformation, aren't we?
Speaker 1:So be careful of what you wish for yeah, we're going to get the fax machines back? You never know.
Speaker 2:And we do know that SIPO did have a significant exercise in digital transformation, at least on the patent side. They've got a new service that's online now. It's going through some growing pains, which is kind of normal in it, but it does help practitioners because often we're the front line. We're kind of normal in it, but it does help practitioners because, you know, often we're the frontline, we're the first client of CBO, not it's not the applicants, right?
Speaker 2:and it's the same thing in the UK, it's the. It's your patent and trademark agents that are right there in front of the office's face, and so if you can make those people's lives easier than everyone, is having, and certainly on the trademark front in the past year.
Speaker 3:They've digitized all the records and you know, you can automatically see everything on the file and that's so helpful. Yeah, because you can go back and just even for researching you know other marks and for whatever just to see what happened at the time when it was examined. That's incredibly helpful to be able to just access that without having to call and order a file. You know, because sometimes you don't know what you're looking for until you've found it. Yeah, yeah, that's been a really good push that they it's taken forever because you can imagine they've digitized everything. So that's, you know hundreds of well, maybe not hundreds of years, but a couple hundred years worth of files. So, yeah, that was such a great initiative. I'm really proud of them for doing that, because it must have been easy to pick up. You don't need to do that.
Speaker 6:Joanne, do you mind if I share a story when I was younger in my career. It relates to SIPO and this age of socialization. So I was an already clean student. I was sent off to the Canadian Patent Office to do some searching. I met up with an examiner and she's like well, I can meet up with you in a few minutes. Let me just move some of my files. She pulled out what looked like a seal club. A seal club. She hooked it onto a box and then dragged this box along the carpet from one cubicle to the other. And then she rifled through her box and found the file. And I'm like that is scary. That's exactly how they moved their files years ago. They had a box they dragged across the carpet with the seal club like an instrument.
Speaker 5:I guess we still drag and drop, don't we? There you go. Thank you all for coming on. It's been an absolute pleasure. Enjoy the rest of Inter. Thank you, I'm sure you're having a good time so far, you as well. We'll see you on the next one Very soon, very soon. Thank you guys. Outro Music