Giuseppina D’Agostino is the Founder and Director of IP Osgoode, an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, and the Founder and Director of the new IP Intensive.

“There is nothing quite like this,” stated venerable Justice Roger T. Hughes referring to the IP Intensive Program as he presented one of the many distinguished lectures peppering the first two weeks of the program.

The Intellectual Property Law and Technology Intensive Program (IP Intensive) is a unique program that gives students practical, experiential education in a workplace setting for an entire term in lieu of being in the classroom.  It kicked off appropriately on the first day of classes in the newly-renovated Osgoode building shown in the photo.

The IP Intensive begins with 2 weeks of lectures by experts prominent in the IP community.  The lectures cover a wide variety of topics, from “ADR and Mediation in IP” to “Business and Economics of IP and Innovation”, from “Pharma and Biotech – R&D and Tech Transfer” to “Digital Media, Journalism and Freedom of Expression”.  Our IP Osgoode Student Interns hear from a Federal Court judge, the Chair of the Trade-marks Opposition Board, General Counsel of the Copyright Board of Canada, counsel from the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner’s Office, in-house counsel from a broad range of industries, start-ups and blue chip companies, practitioners from the major Canadian law firms, and of course, a panoply of academics.

Then IP Osgoode Student Interns participate in an 11-week internship.  We have a wonderful array of placement partners from government agencies to music and media organizations to hi-tech companies and innovation centres.  Our placement organizations are Canadian Heritage, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, Industry Canada (Copyright and International IP Policy Branch), the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), Stanford Centre for Legal Informatics (CodeX), The Globe and Mail, TVO, Patient Care Automation Services (PCAS) Inc. (doing business as PharmaTrust), and ventureLAB.

Throughout the term the students meet with me periodically to discuss topics relating to intellectual property law, to share their experiences in the work environment, and to participate in a cross-pollination of ideas.  Students also maintain a reflective journal and blog on the IPilogue.  They are also responsible to lead their own seminar presentations, which will occupy the wrap-up week of the course.

We are very excited about the new IP Intensive Program.  This has been a huge team effort by those at Osgoode, including the members of the Clinical Education & Intensive Programs Department.  We thank Osgoode and York University for its financial support through the Academic Innovation Fund.  We also thank the members of our Advisory Board and our law firm sponsors for making this program possible: Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP, Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP, McCarthy Tétrault LLP, Norton Rose OR LLP, and Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP.

Posted in Feature Post, IP Intensive