It was a pleasure.
Evidence of meeting #33 for Science and Research in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was companies.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #33 for Science and Research in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was companies.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Former President and Chief Executive Officer, IRICoR, As an Individual
It was a pleasure.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Corey Tochor
Now we're on to our final two and a half minute round with MP Cannings.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Thank you.
I'm going to follow up on that line of questioning, but I'll turn to Professor Karim to talk about pharmaceutical companies.
You talked about societal challenges that the private sector is often reluctant to get into and the government role there. Is there a possible role for...?
We used to have Connaught Labs, for instance, which produced vaccines and other pharmaceutical products as a Crown corporation. Is there a role for Crown corporations in this space that would keep not only the production of pharmaceuticals in Canada but also the IP? We've heard a lot about encouraging companies to develop the IP, but it seems, as it has been said, to leave the country fairly quickly.
Is there a role for the government to produce Crown corporations that would do this and keep that in Canada?
Associate Vice-President, Commercialization and Entrepreneurship, University of Waterloo
I think there's absolutely a role for the government to support infrastructure, be it through Crown corporations or otherwise, for what could be termed “essential industries” for a country. Vaccines, to me, appear to be one such essential industry. I would imagine that this is a high priority, because if there's another pandemic, we may be in the same situation.
There are other essential industries, as well, for example, across medical.... We don't have a very large medical device ecosystem in Canada either. We typically tend to buy all of our equipment from the U.S. or elsewhere. During the pandemic, we also felt acute shortages, for example, of ventilators and simple X-ray equipment.
Absolutely, this is something that should be part of a wider discussion of what a critical industry and critical infrastructure for Canada is, and then how we should go about looking at investing, be it through a Crown corporation or some other similar mechanism, to ensure that we have access.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Corey Tochor
I thank the witnesses very much for their testimony and the members of Parliament for their insightful questions.
We'll now break to get the second panel up and running.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Corey Tochor
We are carrying on with our study of commercialization of IP in Canada.
We have our next panel of witnesses. Each witness will have five minutes for their opening remarks.
Please do your best to keep it to five minutes. I'll try to get your attention when you're coming close to the end.
First off, for five minutes, we have Professor D’Agostino.
Giuseppina D’Agostino Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
Hello, everyone. It's an honour for me to be here.
My name is Pina D'Agostino, and I am a law professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, for the last 17 years. I specialize in IP, emerging tech, and innovation law and policy. I have researched, published, taught and advised multiple levels of government, and I have been cited by our Supreme Court of Canada.
I felt passionate enough about these issues that, 13 years ago, I founded the first pro bono legal clinic of its kind in Canada, the IP Innovation Clinic, where I have subsidized over $2 million in legal fees, which would have otherwise been billable, to help disenfranchised entrepreneurs start up their businesses. That has has lead to many success stories and jobs created in Canada.
Beyond academia, I have experience as a corporate lawyer working with entrepreneurs, and I serve on the board of directors of Ontario's homegrown Alectra, which is the second-largest municipally owned energy distribution company in North America. I have observed many of the challenges Canadian businesses face and the crucial role that IP plays and should play in the commercialization process. Here, I also note the crucial role of data.
We have blossoming talent and creativity in Canada. Canada boasts a proven track record across all areas of science and tech with leading Nobels, industries and, more recently, artificial intelligence.
To learn from history, Banting and Best discovered insulin in Ontario, but this life-saving compound was not commercialized here. Today, it's a multi-billion dollar industry. This was a missed opportunity not be be repeated. We can and should be doing so much better.
IP is frequently not properly diagnosed, protected or exploited. A serious challenge lies in the commercialization of this talent and creativity. From an IP perspective, developing IP strategies at every level, from nascent to enterprise companies, is key. IP is the new global currency to foster innovation.
All too often, without the security of IP protection, investors will not spend the money to build businesses and to make local talent blossom. Here, we face various challenges and opportunities. I will note just some.
First, universities are the hub of innovation, and they are well poised to solve today's big problems. However, most academics are not trained entrepreneurs. They need to be educated about IP and require expert support from day zero. The average research-intensive university is trying its very best with its scant resources but remains under-resourced and is left with siloed institutional approaches.
Second, tech-transfer personnel are the gatekeepers, but they often have limited industrial experience and knowledge in IP and they lack the financial resources to support IP. Either they don't adequately recognize that there is valuable IP to be protected when a scientist says, “Eureka!”, or they protect the invention by filing a patent. However, because of institutional policies and financial constraints, there is a mandate that, in order for the patent to keep progressing, a licensing deal needs to be in place within a year. This results in missed opportunities.
In biomedical science for instance, stem cells, which is another groundbreaking Canadian invention, has added the burden of conducting preclinical studies for proof of principle. This arbitrary one-year deadline means that valuable patents can be dropped too early. This can all be fixed by changing an institution's practices and investing in commercialization. Note, however, that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. For other sectors, a one-year policy might suffice, for instance in the case of software, thus we need a sector-specific institutional approach. We need to ask what the best IP strategy per sector, per innovation is.
Of course, hiring the most qualified tech-transfer personnel, making investments and paying for the brightest minds can go a long way. In Ontario, the provincial government's IPON has recently put out a call to assist at the tech transfer level. More such help is needed.
Third, we must be committed to a made-in-Canada solution. We need to have a cultural shift and to be risk-takers, while at the same time, we need to have a longer-term business plan. This means not seeking the fastest route once the IP is secured and offloading it. This comes at a cost, since the IP and the future IP, the follow-on IP, likely ends up in the U.S. Insulin is a case in point.
Fourth, and in closing, as tempting as it is for me, as a lawyer, to say that we need to change the law, to make commercialization a success, the entire socio-economic system needs have attention. This is why I applaud you today for convening this study.
Again, we need a sector-specific approach, starting with inculcating and rewarding a culture of innovation, embedding sound institutional policies and practices at every level, and fostering a society that is more inclusive and attuned to under-represented communities sidelined by the innovation ecosystem for far too long. Here, two communities that my work is concerned with are women and indigenous communities.
I thank you for your time and look forward to your comments and questions.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Corey Tochor
Thank you so much for that.
Now we will move on to our second witness, Mr. Gravelle, who is online.
Louis-Pierre Gravelle Partner, Bereskin & Parr, LLP, Intellectual Property Institute of Canada
Good morning.
Thank you for having invited me to appear before the Standing Committee on Science and Research.
I'm here today to represent the IPIC, the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada. I'm a lawyer in private practice, and I'm also an engineer. I've been working in the field of patents for approximately 25 years.
The IPIC has been working for many years now with Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and with the CIPO, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, to promote intellectual property and make people aware of its importance. It also develops intellectual property strategies based on corporate business strategies, and works to implement intellectual property incentives in general.
Iin terms of training and awareness alone, each of our members contributes dozens or even hundreds of hours of unpaid work through activities with companies, incubators, accelerators, universities and colleges, chambers of commerce, and other organizations.
One of our many initiatives involved our association submitting a brief in May 2017 on the same topic the committee is looking at today. Since our last appearance, not counting the health crisis we are still in, there have been two important events that deserve the committee's attention.
On the one hand, in 2018, the government launched its intellectual property strategy. This initiative deserves to be underscored and praised for what it accomplished in terms of obtaining intellectual property information tools, modernizing the patent agent regulatory framework, and establishing the Innovation Asset Collective, the IAC
The other event was the recent decision handed down by the Federal Court in Janssen Inc. et al. v Sandoz Canada Inc., which puts Canadian companies at a serious disadvantage.
This case examined the issue of the scope of patent agent privilege, and more specifically, the confidentiality of communications. The court adopted an extremely restrictive interpretation of the applicable legislative provisions in the Patent Act.
Indeed, the situation is worse now than it was before the adoption of the legislative provisions awarding this privilege to patent and trademark agents. The government needs to take legislative action to set the record straight and ensure that companies that hire patent and trademark agents have this privilege.
The current study is about support for the commercialization of intellectual property, but several questions need to be addressed to circumscribe the scope of what the committee is studying
Who is responsible for commercialization? What kind of intellectual property are we talking about? Where is it from and how is it protected?
In attempting to answer these questions, we could begin by exploring the challenges of intellectual property commercialization.
The first challenge is the misunderstanding of intellectual property by small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, and large corporations, in addition to the myths surrounding it.
The government introduced its intellectual property strategy in 2018, and it is an important initiative.
The ElevateIP and IP Assist programs have just been introduced, and it's still too early to assess their impact. Nevertheless, initial reactions to the IP Assist program have been very positive.
However, some research and development funding programs do not have a commercialization component. For example, the tax incentives program for scientific research and experimental development does not require any company receiving benefits to develop an intellectual property strategy to protect the research being done, nor an obligation to protect the outcomes of the research or to transform it into a marketable service. According to the Department of Finance, these incentives totalled funding of $3.5 billion in 2022.
As a result of this initial challenge, many companies are struggling to identify the intellectual protection created and are accordingly unable to properly commercialize it because there is a risk of not being properly protected.
The second challenge is related to the time between obtaining an intellectual property title and being able to develop it to make it into a marketable product or service.
Simply having protected an innovation does not automatically mean that it's ready for the market. Many patented innovations never make their way to the store shelves or to a website entry.
There are various reasons for this lack of alignment between intellectual property and commercialization: the market may not be quite ready for it; shortage of funds; features poorly suited to the commercial needs of potential clients, and so on. Ongoing support that would enable companies to turn the intellectual property asset into a marketable product would be desirable.
The third challenge is related to the existence of intellectual property held by third parties that can prevent the free manufacture and sale of the innovation. This challenge, although it is real, must first have made better use of the intellectual property by innovative companies in order to create intellectual property assets that can attract value and serve as a counterweight in the event of a dispute, whether real or apprehended.
The previous witnesses and the committee members raised the issue of basic research in the universities. Our 2017 brief did in fact provide a number of potential areas that might mitigate these problems. I'd like to point out that organizations like Axelys, a new Quebec technology transfer centre, are actively working on developing programs, strategies and incentives to make researchers aware of the importance of intellectual property and of the need to protect it, sometimes at the risk of delaying publication of their research findings.
This issue is complex, and it needs a thorough change in culture in university settings. There is no single approach that will meet everyone's needs. The differences between the academic institutions, and the regions, and even between the different fields of science, will require flexibility and adaptability.
In addition to all that, a major gap is the shortage of trained personnel…
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Corey Tochor
I'm sorry to cut you off here. We are over a minute past the time. There's a lot of great information there. I'm sure you'll be able to unpack more of it once we get into the Qs and As.
Starting with the Conservatives, we have Dan Mazier for six minutes.
Conservative
Dan Mazier Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for coming out here today.
Ms. D'Agostino, you mentioned university gatekeepers when discussing concerns with patent applications being dropped too early by universities. You stated that this does not bode well for Canada's innovation economy. Can you expand on that or explain that?
Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
When that scientist says, “Eureka!”, the first place they'll look to is their tech transfer office, which is usually their innovation office within the university. There are certain personnel there who are hired to work alongside the inventor to help file and protect the patent.
In one instance, I talked about stem cells. Sometimes you have personnel there who don't have the deep experience and expertise within that particular sector to even understand the technology. That already is a first barrier of limitations. There are also financial constraints within that office. Here, it would be good for you to also speak directly with a person from tech transfer. I see the follow-on effects when they come to me.
Let's say they do file the patent. For it to keep progressing, the tech transfer office is hungry and worried and wants to ensure they've put their bet on a winning patent. They want to see your licensing deals and what's going on with this technology. They want to see how things are going. Sometimes the tech transfer office will say that they can't follow on with your patent.
That, to me, is a missed opportunity. There's a time gap. The previous witness just talked about this. It depends on the technology. In the case of the biomedical sciences, you just need a little bit more time and some more money to get things done. This is not the case with other technologies.
That's why one of my recommendation is to really look at the tech, have a sector-specific approach and ensure that tech transfer offices are properly staffed with knowledgeable personnel. We need to ensure they're properly compensated and have an understanding and the patience to walk the inventors through their patents. They're at the nascent level because they're the gatekeepers. If they don't make it out of the patent office within the university, they're done and that's something we lose in our innovation ecosystem.
I think it's so crucial. I saw that this was happening and that's why I rolled up my own sleeves to help within the university to do my part to ensure that it doesn't. Now my hope is that, working directly with Innovation York at the York University IP clinic.... It is supported by Innovation York, so we work together. This also avoids that siloing that we talked about that we see happening.
I'm just talking about York. I've seen it happen across other universities as well.
Conservative
Dan Mazier Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
Thank you.
You mentioned IP protection. How big of an issue is the theft of intellectual property to commercialization in Canada?
Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
By “theft”, I imagine you mean patent infringement and copyright infringement. In a sense, we could almost convene another study on this. Canada, as many of you know, is always on a watch-list, in a sense, because we tend to, I imagine, have perhaps a more progressive policy in terms of the IP as opposed to other countries, so sometimes you do see infringements taking place.
In my view, when it comes to commercialization, I think we need to focus on the start-up stage, what IPs are getting filed and how they're protected. We need to have a business and an IP strategy in place to ensure there is that commercialization and that it is kept in-house in Canada.
Conservative
Dan Mazier Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
In our existing system, right now, we have some holes that need to be addressed. How much of this intellectual property would be considered stolen? How much do you think is actually stolen outright?
Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
How much is stolen? Do you mean Canadians stealing IP? I wouldn't—
Conservative
Dan Mazier Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
No, other entities. Are there any big offenders known for stealing IP?
Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
I don't—
Conservative
Dan Mazier Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
Are there no shenanigans going on, when it comes to IP?
Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
No, none that I can speak about or have come to my attention.
Conservative
Dan Mazier Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
Are there any G7 countries we can learn from, when it comes to cracking down on IP theft?
Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, As an Individual
I'm looking at it more through the lens of commercialization.
One country I love to look at is Germany. They have a very strong entrepreneurship ecosystem. Their innovation is very good within industries, because they typically have an inventor-centric approach. Within companies, employees are incented to invent, because they know they're going to have some stake in it. That also incites the manufacturing industry to be more vibrant.
Germany is a nice country to look at.
Conservative
Dan Mazier Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
That's the second time we've heard about Germany. Thank you for those comments.
I know my time is closed. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Corey Tochor
Thank you so much.
We will move on to MP Sousa for six minutes.