Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm here to speak to part 3, division 3, clauses 44 to 72 on intellectual property. My name is Jeffrey Astle. I'm appearing on behalf of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada, or IPIC. I serve on IPIC's governing council as the immediate past president. IPIC is the Canadian professional association of patent agents, trademark agents, and lawyers practising in all areas of intellectual property law, or IP law. I am an in-house lawyer, a patent and trademark agent, with the title of intellectual property counsel, working for Pratt and Whitney Canada, headquartered Longueuil, Quebec.
IPIC wishes to thank the committee for this opportunity to comment on Bill C-59.
I thank the members of the committee for having invited us today to comment on this bill.
This bill proposes significant improvements to Canada's IP framework, most notably by establishing privilege to protect confidential communications between clients and their intellectual property advisers from disclosure in court proceedings, an issue on which IPIC has been advocating.
To establish patent and trademark rights, a client typically seeks the advice and assistance of patent and trademark agents who have the expertise necessary to interpret the technical and legal landscape relevant to their client's business, to consider their client's business strategies and objectives, and to advise their clients on how they might use patent and trademark rights to help achieve these objectives. These professionals have the credentials necessary to help clients secure their intellectual property rights.
So that a client may obtain the best advice possible from their intellectual property advisor, the client and advisor must be able to freely communicate all aspects of the client's business strategies and objectives, the client's competitive landscape and challenges, the client's and advisor's strategies on how to use intellectual property rights to achieve those objectives in view of the competitive landscape and challenges, and the client's and advisor's strategies on how they plan to secure those rights worldwide through the preparation and prosecution of patent and trademark applications before the Canadian and other national intellectual property offices.
Where these communications are at risk of being disclosed, free communication between the client and the intellectual property adviser is discouraged, thereby impeding the adviser's ability to work effectively, resulting in less than optimal advice.
In Canada, unlike other jurisdictions such as the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand, confidential communications between clients and their patent or trademark advisers, in which advice is sought in respect of patents and trademark rights, are not protected from forced disclosure in court. This circumstance places Canadian innovators at a disadvantage in asserting their intellectual property rights in litigation in Canada and in other jurisdictions such as the United States, where courts force the disclosure of confidential communications because no protection against such forced disclosure is provided in Canada.
Communications between clients and their intellectual property advisers in which advice is sought in connection with patents and trademarks should receive the same protection as those communications in respect of advice sought in other areas of the law. In both cases there is a need for full, free, and frank communication between those who need the advice and those who are best able to provide it.
By fixing this gap, Bill C-59 ensures that Canadian businesses can speak openly with their intellectual property advisers in order to obtain the best possible advice about protecting their inventions or trademarks, knowing that those conversations will not be revealed to their competitors through a court process or litigation.
Businesses small and large can now confidently explore the possibility of securing intellectual property rights while knowing that strategic information shared confidentially with their intellectual property advisers will be protected. This provision will allow Canadian businesses to be more competitive in Canada and overseas.
Bill C-59 also allows the Canadian Intellectual Property Office the ability to extend deadlines in cases of force majeure events, thereby helping to avoid the unintentional loss of intellectual property rights where, for example, floods or ice storms prevent the timely filing of documents with the office. This is another initiative on which IPIC has advocated with the government, and we are pleased to see that the government is taking the appropriate steps to fix this issue.
These improvements will not cost the federal government any money. The protection of confidential communications is consistent with initiatives on this issue taken by many of Canada's most important trading partners and leading innovative economies. It ensures that Canada operates on a level playing field with its international counterparts. With these changes Canada has taken significant steps to reform its intellectual property system and to focus on giving intellectual property professionals the tools they need to better serve and protect innovators.
I welcome your questions.
Thank you for your attention.
Thank you.