Bhupinder Randhawa

About Bhupinder Randhawa

Technology companies that want their inventions protected, and then put to work, bring that job to Bhupinder Randhawa, a principal at Smart & Biggar in Toronto. The practice focuses on patent and technology law: securing IP rights for clients and finding ways to earn from them.

Randhawa's portfolio work runs across a long list of fields, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, robotics and telecommunications among them. Filing is only part of it. Randhawa also maps what a client owns against rivals' patents and market positions, and that research feeds plans to shut out competing technology, bring in or license out technology, and limit exposure to other parties' rights. When it's time to sell or license, the principal structures the deal and helps settle a strategy that gets the most value from it, and sits on several client advisory teams that keep management up to date on IP risks and openings.

Engineering came before law. Randhawa earned a computer engineering degree at the University of Waterloo in 1992 and a J.D. from the University of Toronto in 1997, then became a Professional Engineer and joined the Ontario bar in the same year, 1999. Registration as a patent agent in both Canada and the US followed in 2000, and as a trademark agent in 2010. Managing IP's IP Stars rates Randhawa a patent star.

Much of Randhawa's teaching centres on AI. Talks on AI and patent law at Western University's Faculty of Law in 2024 and 2025, a 2024 Lexology webinar on protecting AI assets and a 2020 CAN-TECH Law Association session titled "The Artificial Inventor?" sit alongside a GenAI article co-written with Andrea Ngo for Lexpert Business of Law. Startup founders have heard Randhawa explain patent basics at ventureLAB and York University's YSpace, and a 2021 WIPR talk looked at neurodiversity in the IP profession.