Jeffrey Vicq and Larry Munn, two of your hosts here at the Canadian Trademark Blog, had the chance to chat with other West Coast-based law bloggers at the recent Seattle Law Blogger Meetup, hosted by the talented Michael Atkins of Graham & Dunn. The event was a terrific success: good information about blogging effectively, as well as a few rounds of good cheer, were shared. Summaries of the event, as well as a few pictures, can be found at the (excellent!) blogs linked below:

• Mike Atkins’ Seattle Trademark Lawyer Blog post here;
• Dan Harris’ China Law Blog post here;
• Avvo’s Avvo Blog post here;
• Rod Stephens’ Employment Advisory Blog post here; and
• Venkat Balasubramani’s Spam Notes post here.

Plans are under development for a second meeting sometime in the coming year, to be held here in Vancouver. Stay tuned.

We’re pleased to welcome two new contributors to the Canadian Trademark Blog, namely Niamh Pollak and Jeffrey Vicq.

Niamh was called to the Bar in Ireland in 2004 and more recently in British Columbia. As an associate with Clark Wilson LLP’s Technology and Intellectual Property Practice Group, her practice will focus on trademark and copyright law, domain name disputes, intellectual property licensing and digital media.

Jeffrey recently completed an LLM at the University of Ottawa with a concentration in Law and Technology, before which he practised for a number of years with another Vancouver law firm. He’s a registered Canadian Trademark Agent and his practice at Clark Wilson LLP will focus on intellectual property and privacy law issues, including trademark prosecution, computer hardware and software licensing, distribution, outsourcing, maintenance and purchase contracts.

With two more contributors we hope to be able to deliver more content to our readership.

Best wishes for the holiday season!

Welcome to the Canadian Trademark Blog. Our goal here is to mix three different perspectives on Canadian Trade-marks — solicitor, litigator, and trade-mark agent; while still drawing connections and pointing out issues relating to technology, IP & privacy law.

We hope to maintain our Canadian focus, or at the very least, add a Canadian spin to things. However, trade-mark issues don’t always have set boundaries, so it’s not likely we will either. We will be seeking stories & information that reflect trends in the law, and how that might effect our daily practice. That doesn’t mean we won’t highlight the latest CIPO announcement, or trade-mark dispute in the newspaper (we will), just that our commentary will also target the bigger picture.

Stay tuned for our first postings.

If you’ve stumbled across this entry, you can probably guess that we’re not quite ready for prime time! Our goal is to soft-launch this blog in mid-August. If you’d like to be notified, please send an email to Neil Melliship, or subscribe to the RSS Feed.