Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP is a Canadian law firm focused on serving the advocacy, advisory, and transactional needs of the country’s most dynamic business sectors.
Cassels brings a rare depth and breadth of experience to both the negotiating table and the courtroom. We offer recognized expertise in resolving complex legal issues, pride ourselves on developing inventive and effective means of solving problems, and have a reputation for assertive and efficient settlements built on a track record of favorable motion and trials decisions – counsel know that we are ready, willing, and able to go all the way to court.
Our litigators represent clients at all levels of federal and provincial courts including the Alberta, BC, and Ontario Courts of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada. Cassels also boasts one of the country’s leading class action defence teams - we successfully defended the first-ever class action in Ontario and have maintained our position as a market leader with precedent-setting class action defence work ever since. As your strategic advisors, our approach to litigation focuses on two things – reputation and success.
Cassels offers one of the largest law practices in Canada, advising clients from start-ups to multi-national organizations—across the street and around the world—and we are consistently cited as market leaders by such authorities as Chambers, Lexpert, and Best Lawyers.
We are dedicated to staying on the leading edge of trends in law and business to offer practical and flexible solutions to any legal challenge.
At Cassels, your success is our priority.
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Updated April 2023
Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP is a global law firm. The firm provides the world’s preeminent corporations and financial institutions with a full business law service. The firm has more than 3700 lawyers and other legal staff based in more than 50 cities across Europe, the United States, Canada, Latin America, Asia, Australia, the Middle East and Africa.
Litigation:
The firm’s global litigation and disputes lawyers advise many of the world’s largest corporations and financial institutions on complex, high-value and sensitive multi-jurisdictional disputes. With more than 50 offices across the globe, the firm has one of the largest disputes legal practices in the world, with significant experience resolving domestic and cross-border mandates, international arbitrations and investigations and enforcement for clients across all the key industry sectors, including financial institutions; energy, infrastructure and resources; transport; technology; life sciences and healthcare; and consumer markets.
The firm’s lawyers both prevent and resolve disputes by providing clients with practical, creative legal advice that focuses on their strategic and commercial objectives. The firm’s experience includes the full spectrum of dispute resolution and litigation mechanisms ranging from negotiation, mediation, conciliation and conflict resolution to vigorous courtroom strategy, multi-party and class action lawsuits and appellate proceedings. The firm have acted on some of the world’s highest profile domestic and multijurisdictional investigations, including high-profile regulatory inquiries, regulatory enforcement, criminal investigations and prosecutions, and related civil disputes and litigation. The firm is experienced in advising on risk and public relations issues in the context of legal disputes.
The firm have a unique offering of ‘on the ground’ strength, advising clients on disputes issues across emerging markets, including Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, together with deep experience in the mature markets of the United States, Europe, Australia and Canada. Members of the team offer fluent capabilities in more than 20 languages across the globe.
As a key component of the firm’s disputes practice, its global practice support team provides clients consistent and proven methodology for complying with document preservation and production requirements throughout the course of disputes, assisting in developing case strategies and priorities while managing and reducing costs for clients.
Updated March 2023
Miller Thomson LLP is one of Canada’s leading national business law firms with approximately 525 lawyers. We consistently deliver the highest quality advisory and advocacy skills and expertise required by international clients doing business in Canada. We have more Canadian locations than any other national firm, allowing our lawyers to provide our clients with valuable local knowledge. More specifically, with offices in Montreal, Vaughan, Toronto, Waterloo-Region, London, Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver, we are uniquely positioned to provide ‘on the ground’ insight and knowledge from the country’s key economic hubs, and under both the common law and civil law systems in Canada.
Miller Thomson’s national advocacy practice comprises close to 200 litigators, organized around a comprehensive range of sub-specialties. Our expertise covers complex commercial litigation, class actions, construction litigation, environmental litigation, insurance defence, IP litigation, health litigation, securities litigation, shareholder disputes, tax litigation, insolvency, and labour & employment disputes, among other areas of litigation support. The national group has extensive experience acting for a wide range of clients in all industry segments in trial proceedings, court applications, arbitrations and appeals at the provincial and federal levels. These clients range from sole proprietorships and individuals to some of the largest and most recognized national and international corporations operating in Canada.
Our litigators look for opportunities for efficient and expedient dispute resolutions. In this regard, our litigators are experienced in mediation and arbitration proceedings of all types, whether required as part of the litigation process or undertaken pursuant to an agreement with the other side to a dispute.
The Group also draws on the firm’s discovery capabilities. Our litigators adopt procedures to drive greater case management and discovery efficiency, thereby mitigating the resource intensive, often costly document production phase of litigation.
We have extensive experience acting for clients in litigation concerning:
Updated March 2023
Smart & Biggar is widely recognized as Canada's leading firm for intellectual property law. With offices across Canada, and over 100 lawyers, patent agents and trademark agents, we are the largest firm focused purely on IP and related specialty areas.
We specialize in asserting and defending our clients' IP assets to maximize their return on investments and preserve competitive advantage. Intellectual property rights - from patents, industrial designs and trademarks, to trade secrets, confidential information and copyrights - are critical business assets that need to be aggressively protected and enforced.
In high-stakes litigation, we know what it takes to win and we routinely handle Canada's most commercially important and technically complex intellectual property cases. Our lawyers possess a rare combination of successful trial and appellate experience combined with a deeply sophisticated understanding of technical subject matter and analytical expertise - resulting in victories at all levels. From start-up companies in emerging growth sectors to multinational corporations across a broad range of industries, we draw on our vast technical and legal experience to provide creative, effective and cost efficient enforcement and litigation strategies tailored to each client's unique situation and needs.
Smart & Biggar has received Benchmark's Award as Canadian IP Litigation Firm of the Year for six consecutive years. Our Practice Group has vast experience and success in all areas of IP litigation, including:
We know what it takes for our clients to win in high stakes IP litigation.
Some of our representative recent victories include:
Largest reported damages award in Canadian history for patent infringement at $645 million
The Dow Chemical Company et al v Nova Chemicals Corporation
Victory in the Federal Court providing relief and clarity for patent owners
Angelcare Development Inc. et al. v Munchkin, Inc.
Success in the Supreme Court of Canada - Abolishing the "Promise Doctrine" for patents
AstraZeneca Canada Inc v Apotex Inc.
Trial victory to protect Captain Morgan "trade dress" to block competitors and protect brand value
Diageo Canada Inc v Heaven Hill Distilleries Inc.
Unprecedented site-blocking order requiring Internet Service Providers to impede access to piracy services
Bell Media Inc. et al v Goldtv.biz et al.
Defended the Pampered Chef “PC Logo” in trademark infringement battle with Canada’s largest retailer
Loblaws Inc v Columbia Insurance Company
Longstanding successful representation for Bauer Hockey in various trademark and patent infringement actions for over 25 years
Bauer Hockey Ltd v Sport Maska Inc dba Reebok-CCM Hockey
For over 100 years, we have remained devoted to protecting our clients' intellectual property and technology assets. Whether we are advising an innovative company on patent strategy or infringement issues, providing counsel on brand protection and enforcement, or handling the IP aspects of a corporate transaction, we provide clients with solutions to protect, enforce and leverage their IP.
Smart & Biggar proudly operates as part of the IPH Limited group, under its own brand and independent from other IPH member firms.
Updated March 2023