IP Osgoode at Osgoode Hall Law School is a new, independent and authoritative voice which explores legal governance issues at the intersection of intellectual property (IP) and technology. In the context of a globalizing legal pluralist landscape, IP Osgoode cultivates interdisciplinary, comparative and transnational research, collaboration, policy-thinking and practice. The program’s researchers and collaborators from the academy, government, business and other networks actively engage in a vibrant Canadian and border-crossing, transnational debate.  Our advisors are leading experts in the legal community and provide the bedrock of support and leadership to the program. Drawing from the best Canadian forces and the program’s global partners, IP Osgoode is involved in some of the most important and cutting-edge IP law and technology related research and policy discussions of today. Among the program’s current target areas are all facets of intellectual property protection and access, privacy, ethics and intersecting areas of the law, from contract, health, labour, aboriginal, environmental, constitutional, corporate and international all within a variety of disciplines, from business, sciences, and the arts.

We aim to provide balanced and objective research, offer new and unexplored viewpoints to public policy discussions which are inclusive of the opinions and interests of a broad range of IP stakeholders (including governments, nongovernmental organizations, the legal community, businesses and the general public) and ultimately, act as a facilitator for the flourishment of a knowledge-based society in Canada.

IP Osgoode is structured on the basis of a tight connection of teaching and research. IP Osgoode courses include Intellectual Property, Policy Challenges in Intellectual Property, Intellectual Property Theory, International Intellectual Property Law, Copyright, Digital Copyright, Patents, Trade-marks and an array of other courses and specialized seminars in the undergraduate and graduate law curriculum. Several courses are cross-listed with other departments at York.

The IP Osgoode program regularly hosts IP Osgoode Speaks (a speaker series), invites IP Osgoode collaborators and visiting faculty to research and teach in the program, and organizes various workshops and symposia.

IP Osgoode’s online blog – IPilogue – is the first of its kind, run and edited by Osgoode Hall students and covers on an ongoing basis pressing intellectual property law and related issues of the day.  Best IPilogue entries are awarded the Gowlings LLP IPilogue Award.

Whether it’s in the realm of biotechnology, the Internet or any other technology that raises novel challenges, IP Osgoode is thinking about Canada’s newest legal issues.

View IP Osgoode’s introductory video below: