If Canada were a bakery, we’d be world-class at inventing new culinary trends and markets. We’d invest taxpayer dollars into the finest ingredients, pay our chefs to experiment and subsidize the ovens. Then, just as the cakes came out of the oven, we’d hand them to foreign companies to sell, while Canadians line up to buy a slice at twice the price.

That’s Canada’s intellectual property (IP) problem in a nutshell. We’re great at creating new technologies and solving critical issues, but not so great at benefiting from the value they generate. And in a 21st-century economy where intangible assets are the new natural resources, that’s a recipe for disaster.

This was the fundamental issue put before law students at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in late August, where a panel of experts laid out the stakes for the country’s way forward at this moment of economic rupture. Some of the law school’s leading students learned that unless Canada finds a way to hold on to its IP, the country’s brightest minds will continue baking wealth for someone else’s table.

Just ask Skygauge Robotics

Born at the BEST Lab at York University, Skygauge Robotics pitched its vision for drones that could press against surfaces, perform inspections and even remove rust from naval ships. But investors were wary. The drone industry had been littered with bankruptcies at the time.

The turning point was a patent.

“Everything you’re seeing today is directly the result of the IP Innovation Clinic helping us secure our first patent early on,” said Skygauge Robotics co-founder Nikita Iliushkin. “That was critical and instrumental in our success.”

That patent application, strategically filed with the support of the IP Innovation Clinic at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School, gave Skygauge an asset, defensibility and credibility. It helped convince investors to back them and it set the company on a path to global contracts. Today, Skygauge drones are deployed internationally, protecting critical infrastructure and preventing costly downtime in industries where a single day of disruption can cost more than $1 million.

Without that patent, Skygauge might never have left the garage.

Skygauge’s story was one of many highlighted during one of the IP Innovation Clinic’s IP Commercialization seminars.

Founded by Prof. Pina D’Agostino, one of the country’s most influential lawyers and now overseen by Joseph Turcotte, an award-winning IP and commercialization specialist, the IP Innovation Clinic is Canada’s largest pro bono IP law clinic.  

Its two-week IP Intensive seminar series convened leading experts, including Jim Hinton, IP lawyer and strategist, and founder of Own Innovation, Anthony de Fazekas, partner at Mintz, and Alexis Conrad, Principal IP Advisor, ElevateIP at Communitech. They all painted a stark picture of Canada’s IP challenge and the opportunity to fix it.

“We provide one-to-one assistance to York researchers and inventors as well as external entrepreneurs and startups who otherwise couldn’t afford IP support,” said Turcotte. “The clinic helps bridge the gap between innovation and commercialization.”

Ask any IP expert and they’ll say it’s a bridge Canada desperately needs to strengthen.

“We pay for the work … and then we pay again”

“The most valuable corporate assets today are IP and data,” said Hinton. “Canada is giving them away while others are increasing IP ownership. Ultimately, we pay for the work and then we pay again when we want to use it.”

The numbers prove his point. More than half of the value of a smartphone is intellectual property. China, which held fewer than a dozen high-value cleantech patents in 2000, now has more than 5,000. The U.S. holds millions. Canada? Barely a blip, and much of what we do generate quickly flows abroad.

IP is strategic, not paperwork

Anthony de Fazekas warned that too many Canadian firms treat IP like paperwork instead of a strategy.

“One of the biggest problems I see is the knee-jerk approach of ‘I have a technology, let’s just file a patent,’” he said. “We need to think about value creation more broadly, such as human expertise, processes, data and organizational know-how. That’s all IP.”

de Fazekas and Hinton liken IP to an iceberg, with patents being just the visible tip. The foundation below is made up of structural capital, trade secrets and employee know-how. That’s where much of the value lies. Policymakers who focus only on the tip are missing the real assets. And ignoring those assets has consequences.

“Sometimes the better technology doesn’t win,” said de Fazekas. “A weaker product can box in the leader if it’s backed by a more aggressive IP strategy.”

A social benefit, too

For Alexis Conrad, the IP conversation is about social impact as much as it is about economics.

“We’re seeing companies get better with it, but the awareness is still shockingly low,” she said. “The more we can do to build capacity, provide education and support programs like ElevateIP, the stronger our whole ecosystem will be.”

Conrad points to medical research as an example.

“If the IP isn’t protected, we’ve essentially invested in health care and it walks right out the door,” she said. “ElevateIP was designed to keep Canadian IP in Canada, for the economic and social benefit of Canada.”

She also urged students and practitioners to be advocates as they enter the workforce.

“Be a champion and advocate. Nothing stops you from taking this on as a personal passion. Write to MPs, speak at chambers of commerce and support your local clinics,” she said. “Killing these programs would kill our future economy.”

Policymakers face a choice

Skygauge shows what happens when Canada gets IP support right. But too often, innovators are still vulnerable and lack critical backing. Programs like ElevateIP and the IP Innovation Clinic work, but they’re dependent on short-term and unstable funding, reaching only a fraction of those who need them in an area where a single patent application can take more than three years to be granted.

“Innovation is only valuable if we own it,” said Conrad. “Policymakers must make IP a national priority. Our future economy depends on protecting the ideas we create today and benefiting from them tomorrow.”

Support programs like ElevateIP and the IP Innovation Clinic

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