When considering intellectual property (IP) litigation, you need experienced and trusted lawyers and agents at your side. To help you navigate your dispute and secure a result that achieves your objectives, Field Law has a team with broad experience in IP litigation matters before both Provincial and Federal Courts and in arbitrations and mediations.
When working with clients facing technical or mechanical related patent litigation, our team is further strengthened by Ryan Krushelnitzky, a lawyer in Field Law’s litigation team who also has a Ph.D. in civil engineering. Combining Ryan's engineering background with our IP experience provides clients with a unique and comprehensive approach to IP litigation.
The lawyers and agents in our IP litigation group can help you across a range of areas including:
- IP litigation strategy and planning before the suit commences and throughout
- Representative discoveries
- Obtaining pre-trial injunctions and orders including:
- Norwich orders (to get evidence from non-parties about the identity of alleged infringers)
- Anton Piller orders (to provide the right to search premises and seize evidence in advance of suit)
- Mareva injunctions (for the preservation or “freezing” of assets in the course of an IP dispute)
- Preliminary injunctions to restrain or prevent infringing conduct
- Trademark opposition proceedings before the Trademarks Opposition Board (TMOB)
- Appeals of US trademark issuances before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB)
- Protesting (Canadian) Patent applications, claims re-examination requests;
- Proceedings before the (US) Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) including:
- IPRs (Inter-parties post-grant reviews)
- Derivation proceedings
- Appeals and re-examination proceedings
Contact any one of our IP litigation group including Laura MacFarlane at lmacfarlane@fieldlaw.com or 403-260-8577 to discuss how we can protect and enforce your IP rights.
Oilfield computer software protected
Our Client: An oilfield service provider with a very successful program for booking workers' travel and related needs.
Where we began: Our client built a very successful sales book. A prior employee involved in the software development issued suit against our client claiming he was a co-author of the software.
Our approach: Our team applied what they have learned through the years on copyright cases - in Canada the author is the owner; that is, the person "holding the pen" (in this case, coding the software by tapping the keyboard). In addition, it was clear that the true author had reams of experience and success in developing software and that the prior employee had little or no training and didn’t know computer languages. In other words, the claim "didn’t add up." We oversaw our client’s case and also advised two consecutive teams of outside lawyers handling the case for the client’s Director who was also sued. "Keep it simple, get the necessary facts in, don’t complicate it and get it to trial" was the mantra.
The result: We got the team to follow the mantra against all temptations otherwise. The case was dismissed by the Federal Court in a relatively quick manner, relatively cheaply, and without any live testimony or cross-examination required along the way or at trial. The case is now the only Canadian precedent on what activities give rise to software authorship.