Industry committee  I'll be doing the opening remarks.

Industry committee  Actually, we have two presentations that we'd like to run you through.

Industry committee  We were given 10 minutes each.

Industry committee  Is that still appropriate?

Industry committee  Good morning, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this morning about intellectual property. We have two presentations. Intellectual property is managed in the government through two organizations. The industry department, which is

Industry committee  Thank you. Now we'll talk about the administration of intellectual property. As I've mentioned before, we belong to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, Canada's administrator for IP. We have a very specific role, basically to examine applications for IP and to grant or

Industry committee  I'd like to add that patent thickets happen principally in the States and in the U.K. where they allow patenting of software, where things tend to move quite fast and it's very important to secure your position in the market, and they do that a lot through IP. We don't see a lo

Industry committee  When a business owner is considering spending a lot of money, especially if theirs is a small business, they look at where they should file an application first. Their first consideration should be where their biggest market is. They know it costs between $20,000 and $25,000 to f

Industry committee  Precisely.

Industry committee  It is entirely up to them.

Industry committee  That's an excellent question. Canada's industrial base is a bit outside my area of expertise. I can tell you that, in terms of intellectual property filings, we recently received numerous applications from Alberta in the field of natural resource development. There isn't really a

Industry committee  Round tables are currently under way with business owners. We just finished one in Quebec with a business owner who had used the IP regime properly. She told us that business owners were quite apprehensive about the whole thing because it takes a lot of money and because they hav

Industry committee  Yes, that would not be a problem.

Industry committee  Yes, 2008.

Industry committee  To be honest, it's a bit tough to carry out such large-scale surveys. Right now, our focus is on round tables. Several rounds of talks with business owners are planned. We talk to business owners who are innovating but have not used the intellectual property regime. We also talk