Stéphane E. Caron

About Stéphane E. Caron

Stéphane E. Caron is a partner in Gowling WLG's Ottawa office, handling copyright, technology, media and trademark work on both the advisory and the disputes side. Questions about software, databases and AI come up often. Caron's clients range from entertainment companies, creators, publishers and software developers to manufacturers, service businesses and energy companies, and the list also takes in government departments, crown corporations, copyright management organizations and professional associations.

As a member of the firm's Intellectual Property Litigation Group, Caron represents clients in the Federal Court, the Federal Court of Appeal and the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, and before the Trademark Opposition Board. The work has reached the Supreme Court of Canada too: in York University v. Access Copyright (2021 SCC 32), Caron was counsel for three international interveners, the International Authors Forum, the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations and the International Publishers Association.

Caron started at Gowling, Strathy & Henderson as an associate in 1996, the year of the Ontario call, and became a partner at Gowling Lafleur Henderson in 2007. A year later came the role of leader of the firm's Copyright National Practice Group, and in 2009 Caron chaired the Copyright Policy Committee of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada. Caron has extensive experience advising clients on copyright and technology policy.

Teaching has been part of the picture as well. From 1998 to 2018, Caron taught copyright law at the University of Ottawa as an adjunct professor, and still gives talks on what's changing in copyright, technology, media and trademark law. In 2024 that included speaking on AI and copyright at the eighth Sommet musique et technologie, an event put on by APEM, the music publishing professionals' association. Caron also holds a civil engineering degree, and works with clients in both English and French.