Julius Melnitzer, Lexpert Magazine/The Globe and Mail
(Extract)
A Canadian company’s important legal victory in an infringement complaint before the US International Trade Commission (ITC) highlights a unique opportunity for Canadian businesses, especially smaller ones, to protect their market space without protracted litigation.
“Canadian companies with an international footprint requiring a timely resolution to IP disputes should explore resort to the ITC as a means of resolution,” says Brad White [partner and Chair of Osler’s National Intellectual Property Department], global coordinating IP litigation counsel for Ottawa-based Standard Innovation Corporation (SIC), a manufacturer of sexual wellness products.
…
“It would have been easy to go the traditional route of a lawsuit alone,” White says. “But SIC is a small company with limited resources, it was not likely to get an interlocutory injunction, and the years it would have taken to resolve a lawsuit would have interfered considerably with the exponential growth it was experiencing.”
Increasingly, the ITC has become the IP litigation venue of choice for patent and trademark infringement cases in the last few years, and the number of cases heard there has risen exponentially. “The ITC’s popularity has grown because the process is speedy and the Commission has the power to ban the importation of the product in question,” White says.
To read the full article, please refer to the November/December issue of Lexpert magazine.