On Thursday, Ottawa is unveiling its intellectual property strategy, with plans to spend $30 million to create an independent “patent collective” that will allow access to intellectual property and legal protection for small and medium-sized businesses who are trying to get in on the innovation economy.
The release of the national IP strategy coincides with World IP Day. Ottawa hopes that its IP strategy will help Canada become more competitive from an intellectual property standpoint. Other aspects of the IP strategy include plans to close loopholes and discourage bad behaviour when it comes to patent infringement and trademark abuse.
The federal government will also name five superclusters that will share $950 million in government cash. Media materials released ahead of the announcement note that IP intensive industries south of the border account for 19% of jobs and 35% of GDP, while Canada lags behind with 14% of jobs and 25% of GDP. Moreover, firms that hold formal IP are more likely to engage in product innovation, export around the world, and pay their employees more.
“We know IP is a critical ingredient in helping Canadian businesses reach commercial success,” Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains said in a news release. “Canada’s IP Strategy will make sure Canadians know the value of their intellectual property and how to leverage it to innovate, increase profits and create middle-class jobs.”
Building Canada into a globally-competitive intellectual property player is a priority for the Liberal government. In a lot of ways, the $950 million earmarked for five innovation superclusters across the country is fundamentally about bringing academics and business together to create new technology and new commercial applications to give Canada a competitive advantage.
Ottawa also wants to create an “IP Marketplace” which will become a centralized portal for businesses and innovators to create a searchable list of all intellectual property held by government and academia, to aid in licencing and commercialization.
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