Overview

Intellectual Property

Increasingly the most important assets of a business are its intangible knowledge and information. The processes for making its products, the ideas for the products themselves, the name and logo that is used and the goodwill attached to these, the customer lists, and the service manuals may be harder to replace than the physical assets of the factory or office. Various types of intellectual property rights can be used to protect these assets. They include patents, trade-marks, copyrights, industrial designs, domain names, trade-secrets and confidentiality. We have experience in all of these areas.

Franchising

Franchising as a business and distribution model continues to increase in popularity around the world. Although franchising is primarily based on contractual relationships, an increasing number of countries have adopted either franchise sales laws or franchise relationship laws or both. And in civil law jurisdictions in particular the courts are extending doctrines of good faith to franchise sales and relationships, whether or not franchise specific legislation has been adopted.

Licensing & Distribution

Our work in these areas is a mixture of intellectual property law, contract law and regulatory issues such as privacy, competition law and packaging and labeling requirements. Licensing and distribution are now increasingly international and our knowledge of international dispute resolution mechanisms, languages and the assumptions and requirements of civil law legal systems allow us to provide very effective advice to clients on international matters, particularly where the issues involve more than one foreign country.

Competition Law

Competition law includes mergers and cartels but our primary areas of interest are best described as 'single-firm' conduct and the intersection of intellectual property laws with competition law. Single firm conduct includes the rules regarding pricing such as price discrimination, re-sale price maintenance, predatory pricing and promotional allowances; the rules regarding distribution practices such as refusal to deal, exclusive dealing, and tied selling; and unfair sales practices such as misleading advertising.


Privacy

Privacy Law has developed relatively recently in Canada and around the world. Many countries and businesses are still absorbing the impact of the legislation that has been adopted to date. Individuals are still learning the implications of their rights in this area. We have experience in assisting clients across Canada and internationally with general privacy compliance, specific project compliance and handling complaints from privacy authorities and individuals.

E-Commerce

In a few short years a presence on the Internet has moved from being an interesting experiment to a necessity for modern businesses. But the appropriate standards for e-commerce are still being developed.

International

The increasing globalization of markets has brought many opportunities for businesses, but also many challenges. Fortunately the advent of the internet and of e-government has dramatically increased access to the laws and courts decisions of many jurisdictions. This has facilitated the co-ordination and provision of legal advice in international matters.

Regulated Services

In most market economies there are some goods and services whose distribution and sale the government chooses to regulate to implement, for example, health, safety or consumer protection policies.