The firm has appointed Christopher Bown as leader of its patent group in Canada
Gowling WLG has tapped longtime partner Christopher Bown to head the firm’s patent group in Canada. Bown says the role will involve navigating new AI tools, ongoing challenges with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, and changes to the intellectual property landscape that resulted from recent big-name mergers.
“It’s a very exciting time in the industry right now in Canada,” Bown told Canadian Lawyer on Friday. “Instead of being… on the sidelines, I wanted to actually be in a position to shape our response to some of the changes and make sure that we're basically taking full advantage of anything and any opportunity that might be coming our way.”
Bown started his new position on Jan. 1.
The lawyer anticipates several challenges in the patent space in 2025. One ongoing priority is pushing patent applications through the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, which has seen significant processing delays since undergoing a major systems upgrade last summer.
The extended wait times have “caused great stress for our clients, especially on the pharmaceutical side of things, as only a minuscule amount of patent applications have actually been allowed since July,” Bown says. He references cases where clients have checked the status of their applications and panicked upon discovering that the patent office has deemed their IP assets abandoned because they allegedly failed to meet a deadline. However, Bown says this is never actually the case.
He adds that if such processing issues continue for much longer, “we all believe – and our clients are telling us – they might start questioning whether Canada is worth a portion of their IP budget.”
Another challenge Bown foresees involves a slew of new AI tools that can draft patent applications, a job that makes up a big part of the patent practice at Gowling. “From some of our testing, they are actually pretty good,” Bown says of the tools. “They're drafting patent applications in an hour, two hours, and that is just an absolute fraction of what it usually takes us.
“We can obviously use that, but at the same time, it’s kind of scary because… we as a profession deal with very, very confidential and sensitive information, and AI is based on learning from the information that's fed into the AI systems,” Bown says. “That poses a whole bunch of legal and ethical questions as to whether firms should be even using [these tools], how they can be used. That’s very exciting.”
Last year, Canada’s IP market saw a notable shift when IPH Limited acquired IP firm Bereskin & Parr – the company’s fourth Canadian acquisition in two years. That acquisition effectively gave IPH, based in Australia, control over about a third of the Canadian patent and trademark law market, raising concerns about higher costs and conflicts of interest.
This change, plus the addition of several US law firms into the Canadian marketplace, represents another area Bown expects to closely monitor in 2025. It’s “certainly raised some questions in the industry as to whether these bigger… firms and the model that they present is right for all clients, and also whether that model is the right fit for all patent practitioners,” Bown says.
That model is defined by “a lot more automation and a lot more process,” he adds. “That's a model that is obviously meant to generate a lot of revenue, but some clients do want that personal touch, and they want to have kind of a point person on their files they can reach out to, even for the smallest things, and get answers to.”
In his new role, Bown says his goal is to raise the profile of Gowling’s patent group and drive home to clients that Gowling is a full-service firm with an international reach.
He notes that Gowling has opened several international offices, including in China, Singapore, and the Middle East.
“I'm excited by the idea of being able to connect with those people in those jurisdictions and connect them with our Canadian team,” Bown says. “The tremendous bench strength that we have as a group here in Canada and the wealth of connections that we have built through the 100 years we've been doing this can help service clients in those important emerging markets in ways that I feel that other IP firms in those jurisdictions just simply will not be able to do.”
