Western Intellectual Property and Innovation Legal Clinic supports researchers and early-stage businesses to navigate the innovation ecosystem
March 05, 2024
Photo LTR: Professor Bassem Awad, Daniel Derkach (JD ’23), Bushra Amir Ali (JD ’22)
With the acceleration of technology and the increasing number of Canadians embracing entrepreneurship many researchers, inventors, and creators in southwestern Ontario are in search of affordable legal services to protect and scale-up their businesses.
The Western Intellectual Property and Innovation Legal Clinic (WIPILC) was established in September 2021 as a specialized intellectual property (IP) clinic at Western Law to help respond to this growing demand. Professor Bassem Awad, WIPILC founding faculty director, was eager to bridge the gap in the innovator’s commercialization dilemma while enhancing experiential learning opportunities for students.
The student-operated and faculty-supported clinic provides pro-bono legal information to a wide range of clients. Researchers, authors, artists, inventors, entrepreneurs, start-ups and small businesses all benefit from early-stage advice to generate, protect, leverage, and commercialize their intangible assets. Meanwhile, student directors and case team members benefit from the opportunity to improve their professional skills by examining real world problems and gain valuable experience from client facing interactions.
While many clients come with questions regarding common elements of intellectual property strategy, such as trademarks and copyright, clinic staff aim to raise the awareness of its clients on a broad range of best practices within the realm of intellectual property and technology law, including data ownership and privacy.
“My favorite part of the experience was getting to meet the client for the first time, learn about their business and figure out what questions they already had. If they had two questions, we'd identify seven or eight more issues they needed to address that they maybe hadn't thought of,” said Daniel Derkach (JD ’23), former WIPLIC student director, who is now articling in the IP department at Gowling WLG.
“They often would tell us on those calls how helpful it was just to raise those issues and put them on their radar. That was also why I enjoyed it so much — because it was probably the most immediately rewarding kind of experience.”
Looking back on her time as a student director, Bushra Amir Ali (JD ’22), now an associate at Shift Law Professional Corporation, cites working with the CEO and founder of Whimble as one of her most gratifying clinic experiences.
Whimble, a care tech startup that connects individuals living with disabilities to on-demand attendant services, needed information on branding, data privacy, and the legal and regulatory landscape around healthcare and digital apps.* With the support of a MITACS grant, Amir Ali completed a research project to establish the intellectual property and data privacy strategy for the venture.
“The ultimate deliverable was a fairly extensive report, identifying the various regulatory considerations for launching the startup, the data and privacy considerations for handling personal information and personal health information in Ontario and across Canada, and then also providing an IP strategy,” said Amir Ali, who has carried the experience into her career specializing in trademark prosecution, IP advisory, and contracts.
“It was honestly a tremendously valuable exercise for me. The experience was also very applicable to similar situations that came up in my practice [with other clients]. It just goes to show, a very niche kind of research topic helped me to secure [new] clients and maintain these great client relationships in my work now.”
Not many law school graduates can say they have contributed to the establishment of a legal clinic and completed complex projects such as drafting an open-source licensing agreement all while balancing their studies. For Derkach and Amir Ali, this experience provided a unique competitive advantage and laid an invaluable foundation for their careers.
“It's been a huge influence on what I want to do with my law practice in IP. The law clinic experience for me essentially transitioned into the beginning of my actual legal career,” said Derkach. “I think the clinic was the standout aspect of my application that helped me secure my articling position. I've been put on files that I think I otherwise wouldn’t have been put on because of the experience I've had at the clinic.”
Amir Ali agrees that the clinic produces law graduates who are practice-ready and expresses her appreciation for her clinic experience in helping her gain certainty about the direction of her career.
“We were in a position to get going as soon as we started practicing in the legal field. I wouldn’t otherwise have been comfortable jumping into client meetings and providing guidance at the onset as an articling student and in my current role,” said Amir Ali.
“We had a very exceptional opportunity to get involved with the clinic at the onset. It sparked a very important consideration for myself where I committed to the practice of intellectual property law as soon as I started the clinic. It became clear that this is what I see myself doing in the future. I'm so happy that I had that realization in law school.”
*NOTE: Whimble has expressed consent to being featured in this story. Client information is always confidential unless consent has been granted to disclose.
