16 lawyers · Established 1890 · City of Toronto, Waterloo Region, City of Ottawa and 4 more locations
One of 2,276 law firms listed in Toronto, and one of 136 handling Intellectual Property.
Smart & Biggar is an intellectual property firm whose more than 180 lawyers, patent agents and trademark agents work out of six offices. Its practice reaches from securing patents, trademarks and industrial designs to protecting copyright and trade secrets. Alongside that core, it advises on marketing and advertising law and on regulatory compliance for life sciences companies.
The Smart & Biggar name actually covers three separate partnerships that work together. Smart & Biggar LP, set up under Quebec law, runs the patent and trademark agency side of the business. Smart & Biggar LLP is the law firm for legal work anywhere in Canada that doesn't involve Alberta law, and Smart & Biggar Alberta LLP, owned entirely by individual lawyers, handles the legal work tied to Alberta's laws.
Its clients run from start-ups and mid-sized businesses to multinationals, venture capital and private equity investors, and government research organizations, both in Canada and around the world. Many of them have relied on Smart & Biggar to protect, enforce and commercialize their IP for more than fifty years.
The Toronto office covers the firm's whole range of IP and litigation work and puts added weight on pharmaceutical litigation, marketing and advertising law, and regulatory compliance. In Alberta, the Calgary office works for clients in energy, oil and gas included, as well as in transportation, agriculture and high technology.
Smart & Biggar's roots go back to 1890, when Frederick B. Fetherstonhaugh opened the patent agency Fetherstonhaugh & Co., which grew quickly in the early 1900s. Within a few decades the business had expanded under a closely related law practice, Smart & Biggar, founded by Russel S. Smart and Oliver M. Biggar. The agency and the law firm worked in close partnership throughout their history, and in 2019 both took the single Smart & Biggar name. In October 2022 the firm joined the IPH group.
Two more long-established Canadian IP firms have since been brought in. IPH bought Ridout & Maybee in September 2023; founded in 1893, it had offices in Toronto, Ottawa and Burlington, and its co-founders were John G. Ridout, author of Ridout on Patents, and J. Edward Maybee, who served as president of the body now known as the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada. In August 2024 IPH announced it was acquiring Bereskin & Parr, a firm dating from 1965 that had more than 80 lawyers and patent and trademark agents.
Smart & Biggar's patent team manages portfolios in a wide spread of technical fields, from electronics and semiconductors to pharmaceuticals and aerospace.
The trademark group handles more than 3,000 applications a year. It's backed by in-house trademark searchers and by staff who can go to the Canadian Trademarks Office every day.
This group deals with the points where pharmaceutical and biologic patents meet drug regulation. Its files span products from small-molecule drugs and biologics to natural health and veterinary products, and it has drafted many submissions on proposed changes to the regulations.
A separate team, whose members have advanced degrees in plant science, genetics and biology, files Plant Breeders' Rights applications in Canada and abroad. It also negotiates licences for those rights and enforces them.
Advice here takes in promotions such as contests, sweepstakes and loyalty programs, as well as advertising directed at children. On the contentious side, the firm's litigators have handled Ad Standards disputes and disputes over comparative advertising.
Wheelchair accessibleSmart & Biggar sorts its work under three headings: Protect, Enforce and Grow. The third is about advising clients on how to turn the IP they hold into commercial value. In litigation, its lawyers act for plaintiffs and defendants alike, whether a right is being asserted or defended.
AstraZeneca appealed after its patent was struck down under the Promise Doctrine. The Court held that the '653 patent wasn't invalid for want of utility and found the doctrine at odds with the wording and scheme of the Patent Act. Smart & Biggar's Toronto office acted for the appellants.
The Court dismissed the appeal, with Côté J. dissenting, and held that when a patentee elects an accounting of profits, the infringer has to give up every profit causally linked to the invention. Smart & Biggar's Ottawa office acted for the respondents.
This ruling dealt with costs after the Court had allowed Tekna's claim and dismissed AP&C's counterclaim; the parties agreed Tekna, as the successful party, should get its costs as a lump sum. Smart & Biggar LLP in Montréal was solicitor of record for Tekna, the plaintiff.
Decisions where the firm's lawyers appeared as counsel, from public court records. Past cases don't predict future results.
Smart & Biggar's Toronto office is on the 40th floor of 40 King Street West, the address of Scotia Plaza. The 68-storey tower went up between 1985 and 1988 in the downtown financial district, in the area bordered by Yonge, King, Bay and Adelaide streets, and it's connected to the PATH network. The tower takes in the older Beaux-Arts Bank of Nova Scotia Building at 44 King Street West, which the City of Toronto designated under the Ontario Heritage Act in 1975.
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