Industry committee  I actually disagree. I don't think granting IP rights liberally and basically seeing that as a panacea for the problems of the manufacturing sector is the right strategy at all. In fact you're more likely to get more low-quality patents. If we just basically tell everybody to go

Industry committee  The problem with the question is “effective” specialized courts. A number of other jurisdictions have created courts like this. The U.K., for example, has created the U.K. Patents County Court, which has failed to develop the type of expertise that many had hoped it would, or rea

Industry committee  In terms of outreach and training, I think the Canadian Intellectual Property Office is starting to do some very good work, but they've got a narrow mandate and little funding. I offer a course for the Canadian trade commissioners through the Department of Foreign Affairs and I

Industry committee  I also think we need to focus not only on the benefits, but on the risks and the perils. If business leaders know that poor intellectual property management can sink them instead of save them, it puts fear into them, and they had better understand it. We're starting to see this.

Industry committee  Because the issues are so complicated, we have to move beyond banal rhetoric and just saying we need a strong IP policy. Everybody agrees. The question is how. That's what an independent evidence-based review will accomplish.

Industry committee  Yes. The key is to increase certainty and reduce transaction costs. Those should be the overarching principles of intellectual property policies--increase certainty, reduce transaction costs. That means when you go to get a patent, we need to create a system where you're reasonab

Industry committee  That's the CIPC's recommendation for an IP czar. That's precisely what a czar would do.

Industry committee  That's an excellent point. Some countries have done something slightly different. Japan and Korea specifically have created sovereign funds, where the government will acquire strategic patent portfolios that they recognize are of interest to their domestic industries, including,

Industry committee  No. The intellectual property would still be protected, but what would happen is it would be managed and controlled by an entity with domestic interests in mind. I'm not saying that would have happened in Japan, but Japan and Korea and the EU are examples of jurisdictions that ha

Industry committee  Yes, and that's an important point. Open source does not abandon IP protection. You acquire IP protection, and then creatively license it.

Industry committee  I'd like to follow up on Dr. Corbin's point about the metrics, because it's absolutely right. One of the things government can do is to help us to take more nuanced measurements. Simply counting outputs, such as patents, cross-border trademarks, or patents per population, is not

Industry committee  I actually am familiar with the program because I subscribe to HBO. My wife keeps telling me to cancel the subscription, but I keep it anyway, because I love that program. First, I have to emphasize that it's a very different issue from the other aspects of science and technolo

Industry committee  Yes. I think training and awareness are the key. The Canadian International Council, in its report Rights and Rents, called for the establishment of an IP czar, who would have a much broader mandate than the current head of the Canadian Intellectual Property Office to expand tr

Industry committee  No. The legal rules are mostly negotiated through contracts...but also social, cultural, and commercial economic norms. The key lesson for policy-makers is to not presume that everybody wants to manage their IP in the same way. There are some very clever and sophisticated things

Industry committee  Yes, certainly. It's been well known that proximity and interaction in physical spaces facilitates innovation. Innovation does not happen when people are isolated from each other. The same principle applies in intellectual spaces or intangible spaces. If we focus too narrowly on