Innovation

Below are some of the main resources dealing with innovation:

General Information and Resources

Can You Make Money With Your Idea or Invention: This publication, aimed at idea people, inventors, and innovative owner-managers of small companies, describes the tests every idea must pass before it makes money.

Product Licensing: Licensing involves obtaining permission from a company (licensor) to manufacture and sell one or more of its products within a defined market area. The company that obtains these rights (the licensee) usually agrees to pay a royalty fee to the original owner.

Critical Assessment Factors for New Products: If you are either inventing a new product or considering developing a new product to add to your existing product lines, there are a number of critical factors to consider in assessing how practical this is.

Government Programs and Services

A Guide To Patents: The guide is designed to be your introduction to patents and patenting procedures, and to outline how you can use the resources of the Patent Office to further your business or research venture.

Canadian Intellectual Property Office: Responsible for the administration and processing of patents, copyrights, trademarks, industrial design, and integrated circuit topography in Canada.

Canadian Patents Database: The Canadian Patents Database lets you access patent bibliographic data, descriptions and drawings from 1920 to the present time. You can search, retrieve and study more than 1.5 million patent documents.

Patent Agents List : This is a limited list of registered patent agents who are open to accepting new clients.

Policy and Regulations

Patents : A patent gives its owner exclusive rights over a claimed invention. The owner can prevent others from making, using or selling the patented invention in exchange for full disclosure of the claimed invention.

Copyrights: Simply put, a copyright prohibits others from copying your work without your permission. Original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work such as books, plays, songs, paintings, safety instructions, Web pages, how-to manuals and a prospectus are all copyrighted. Copyright also applies to three other kinds of subject-matter: performer's performances (actors, musicians, dancers and singers), communication signals (broadcasts) and sound recordings (records, cassettes, and compact discs).

Trade-marks: A trade-mark is a word, a symbol, a design (or a combination of these features) used to distinguish the wares or services of one person or organization from those of others in the marketplace. Trade-marks come to represent not only actual wares and services, but the reputation of the business. As such, they are considered valuable intellectual property (IP). A registered trade-mark can be protected through legal proceedings from misuse and imitation.

Industrial Designs : Industrial design means features of shape, configuration, pattern, ornament, or any combination of these features that are applied to a finished article.

Integrated Circuit Topographies : An integrated circuit is a product that performs an electronic function in which the elements and interconnections are integrally formed on or in a piece of material (such as a computer chip). An integrated circuit topography is a representation of the way in which the elements and interconnections are spatially related to one another.

Additional Resources