Our Innovation Sector Group

The Innovation Sector Focus Group provides critical services for clients at all stages of innovation development. We are able to help all businesses that are commercializing technical innovation, whether by launching a new venture or expanding existing operations.

Our national team is made up of leading professionals with a broad range of experience in the intellectual property, corporate finance, tax and commercial law fields. With offices in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, Calgary and Vancouver, we have innovation sector professionals across the country. As well, we further assist clients by drawing upon legal expertise in related fields from all these offices.

Our clients include public and private companies and venture funds as well as foreign law and patent firms. Our mission is the efficient and cost-effective deployment of relevant knowledge and skills to advance our clients' interests. Our approach is to present solutions that are based on the national team's experience and knowledge and are sensitive to the business context in which our clients operate.

As a firm, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP is committed to innovation development. We are the primary sponsor of Canada's Top 10 Competition that annually recognizes the most promising early stage and emerging companies in the life sciences, clean-tech and high-tech fields. For more on Canada's Top Ten Competition see www.topcanadiancompanies.com .

Our Services

IP Portfolio Management

Our internationally recognized intellectual property professionals assist clients with the development and management of their knowledge-based assets and IP portfolios that are consistent with their business plans. As one of Canada's leading IP firms, we can implement national as well as international tracking and management programs for intellectual property filings, registrations and maintenance.

We help our clients build their IP portfolio, beginning with the preparation and registration of patent, trade-mark and industrial design applications.

We perform IP audits that assess existing intellectual property rights and procedures. Our agents perform ongoing cost/benefit analysis of filings and registrations and cumulative cost tracking for existing rights. We analyze competitors' intellectual property and identify the best protection for our clients' knowledge-based assets.

Backed by advanced scientific and technical degrees, including in engineering and PhDs in the sciences, our professionals serve innovators by speaking their language and knowing their markets.

Early Stage Advisory

Our professionals work with all sizes of innovators, from start-ups to established firms. We help early-stage companies, whether they are spinouts from an existing business or newly established, to develop legal structuring that is both appropriate and strategic to the enterprise's stage of development. We also help our clients design the most tax-efficient corporate structure. Given our experience with the challenges and traps that face early-stage companies, we act as preferred business advisers to those seeking to rapidly build enterprise value.

Intellectual Property Transactions

We have completed numerous merger and acquisition transactions involving innovation companies. Some of our recent successes include acting as Canadian counsel for global software giant Novell's $200 million acquisition of Toronto-based PlateSpin Ltd. and the US$31 million Series C financing for Epocal Inc., an Ottawa-based developer of enterprise point-of-care blood diagnostic products.

Typically, we perform intellectual property due diligence, assist in tax structuring to account for cross-border issues relating to residency and the ownership of intellectual property and perform export control reviews.

We represent domestic vendors as well as foreign buyers. For cross-border joint ventures, our team of licensing and tax professionals structure the transaction in a manner that maximizes intellectual property protection while assuring tax efficiency.

Venture Capital and Junior Exchange Transactions

Venture Fund Formation:

• We have acted for many clients in the conceptualization and formation of new venture capital funds, from small seed funds to larger public retail venture funds such as StartingStartups.com and Canadian Medical Discoveries Fund Inc.
• Our team pioneered the establishment of the second-generation, labour-sponsored investment funds in Ontario and have been consulted in the current process of redesign and revitalization of the province's early-stage financing sector.
• We have also helped create and finance several incubator funds. The province consulted our experts before introducing the 2001 Ontario Community Small Business Investment Funds legislation. Subsequently, we helped launch several such funds.

Venture Capital Transactions:

• We are regular counsel to many of Canada's best known venture capital funds such as BDC Venture Capital and the FTQ as well as to the portfolio companies they invest in.
• Our approach to investment transactions is to simplify the process and the documentation in order to minimize client costs and reduce the amount of time required to complete the deal.

Venture Thought Leadership:

• BLG has acted for the Ontario Association of Labour Sponsored Investment Funds since its inception in 2001. Over the years, we have been asked to make related presentations to the Ontario Securities Commission and other security regulators across Canada.
• We have participated actively in the subcommittee of the Canadian Venture Capital Association that has made representations to the federal government urging that tax laws be changed to permit administrative relief from the clearance certificate requirement for non-resident vendors.

Junior Exchange Transactions:

• We have worked on the formation of numerous Capital Pool Companies.
• We completed several major transactions on behalf of both the acquirer and the target.
• We do ongoing regulatory compliance work for the companies that are listed on the TSX Venture Exchange.