Industry Committee on June 12th, 2012

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. Ing, Mr. Regan raised his eyebrows when you mentioned you're from Chalk River, because we did have a visit there recently. Bubble Technology in and of itself is a consequence of the science generated at AECL. We had the intellectual property there, which was commercialized.

You've spoken quite a bit about the intellectual property generated by Bubble Technology and commercializing. Have you experienced any situations, given that AECL generates about 12 patents a year, or with taking those they're currently working on and transferring them or commercializing AECL's patents recently?

[Lianne Ing]

We haven't had any recent collaborations with AECL in that regard. A lot of the focus of R and D at AECL in recent years has been more on nuclear reactor technologies and supporting technologies. Our field of research has moved more towards defence and security applications, so there hasn't been a strong overlap. However, in the last year or so, as people have looked at restructuring AECL, there's been a renewed focus at the Chalk River site in terms of reaching out to collaborate and establish greater linkages with partners such as us. In the past year we've actually started some renewed collaborations with AECL to try to take advantage of some of the facilities they have available at the Chalk River site.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Very good.

You mentioned that for small and medium-sized businesses it's expensive enough to get the patent going, but if there's a challenge to your patent then you enter the realm of courts.

Madam Fraser expressed that there should perhaps be a separate smaller court system for the intellectual property. Would you suggest the same sort of thing, or do you envision another type of entity altogether to deal with patents especially as they apply to small and medium-sized businesses?

[Lianne Ing]

It's certainly a concern for a small company when it recognizes that once it has obtained a patent, if a large organization wishes to infringe or create a lot of obstacles for it and wants to throw enough money at doing that, it could tie the small company up in court for a long time and the small company would really be at a huge disadvantage. Certainly if there were some program under which either you would have a separate small claims model approach or you would have some mechanism whereby there would be resources for a small company if it could demonstrate that the technology had a net economic value to the country, there might be some resources they could rely upon to defend themselves against a very large corporation.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Members, before I thank the witnesses, I just want to let you know there will no meeting on Thursday. There was an agreement by all committee members.

I just need someone to move a motion regarding our budget here: that in relation to the study of the intellectual property regime in Canada, the proposed supplementary budget in the amount of $2,600 be adopted. Can I have somebody move that?

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

So moved.

(Motion agreed to)

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you very much, members.

Thank you very much to the witnesses for your very good answers and your time that you invested here as well.

The meeting is adjourned.