Joseph Turcotte, Associate Director

The IP Innovation Clinic at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School is Canada’s largest pro bono IP clinic, offering essential IP and commercialization services to researchers at the university as well as individual inventors and start-ups with limited resources both within and beyond the post-secondary education community. Founded in 2010 by its Director, Prof. Pina D’Agostino, the Clinic is made up of a diverse team that ranges from IP specialists, professionals and lawyers as well as law students from different fields, including those with non-STEM backgrounds. Under the guidance of Prof. D’Agostino and Associate Director, Dr. Joseph Turcotte, the clinic collaborates closely with practicing lawyers, the University’s tech transfer office, commercialization managers, and researchers. Together, they support the innovation economy in Ontario and across Canada by providing pro bono IP assistance to York University researchers and other inventors and innovators who often lack access to IP support and the financial means to retain professional counsel.

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Historically, the IP Innovation Clinic faced a regular backlog of prospective new clients due to overwhelming interest from inventors, small businesses and entrepreneurs at York University and in the broader community. The broad spectrum of technology areas involved also posed a challenge, as it’s impossible for anyone, let alone law students, to be experts in every area or field. Previously, the team relied on free patent search tools like Google Patents and government databases, requiring extensive training on search boolean strategies and keyword navigation. This process was not only time-consuming, it was also prone to error, and frequently involved review from other members of the team. Taken together, their traditional approach contributed to long wait lists and an inability to service all projects, limiting the Clinic’s ability to respond to community needs.

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To address these challenges, Joseph introduced NLPatent to the Clinic for a project to support a University professor developing a health tech device - the mandate involved informing the client about patentability and commercialization potential. The Clinic’s students worked with the professor to gather disclosure materials, review her literature, and conduct a detailed interview to fully understand the technology. With this information in hand, the law students turned to NLPatent and performed a search using a technology description as Natural Language input. NLPatent’s Refine feature allowed them to narrow down their relevant search results in real-time without the extensive keyword training previously needed.

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The team at the IP Innovation Clinic built on the search results to analyze competitors’ activities in the market, uncovering valuable insights to inform next steps. By leveraging NLPatent, the Clinic was able to swiftly create a detailed memo for the professor, outlining the most relevant patent references and providing insights into the competitive landscape. This empowered the professor and the University’s commercialization managers to make strategic R&D and budgeting decisions, ultimately guiding the inventor toward informed choices on patent filing and market positioning.

Thanks to NLPatent’s intuitive search capabilities, the IP Innovation Clinic now services the community more quickly and with greater precision than ever before; lowering the learning curve for non-specialists and making patent search accessible to a new generation of IP practitioners.

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