Intellectual property (IP) legal clinics play a crucial role in helping Canadian inventors and entrepreneurs bring their inventions to market while strengthening the foundations of the country's innovation ecosystem. IP legal clinics provide pro bono IP information and assistance to under-resourced inventors who are not served by the profession. At the same time, when based at law schools, these clinics provide experiential learning opportunities to law students who want to work in the IP profession, which contributes to their career development and increases their legal and interpersonal acumen. These client and student-facing goals improve the ability of Canadians to recognize, protect and exploit intangible assets through IP commercialization strategies, skills that have proven necessary for Canadian businesses to succeed at home and abroad.

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Giuseppina D’Agostino is a senior fellow with CIGI’s International Law Research Program (ILRP), effective November 2016. She is the Founder & Director of IP Osgoode, the IP Intensive Program, and the Innovation Clinic, the Editor-in-Chief for the IPilogue and the Intellectual Property Journal, and an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School.