My Background and Focus

I’m currently a Senior Paralegal on the firm’s Patent Prosecution Team, with extensive knowledge of Canadian and foreign patent practice and experience working with Canadian and foreign clients.

I originally joined MBM in 2010 as a junior paralegal and IP administrator, after completing my Bachelor of Arts degree at Memorial University in Newfoundland, relocating to Ottawa and completing a paralegal program at Algonquin College. With my undergraduate degree under my belt, a keen interest in law, and my paralegal diploma, I knew that I found my home away from home at MBM. Coming from a small community in Newfoundland, I was hoping for an environment that combined the quality and diversity of a big-city law firm with the warmth and small-town feel, and that’s how it felt at MBM. To gain broader firm experience at the beginning of my career, I moved from department to department, trying different roles, including docketing and file opening, accounting, and business development, before settling into a paralegal role. Transitioning from department to department provided me with the opportunity to master many of the firm’s systems. With that firm-wide knowledge, training the new legal administrators and paralegals became an integral part of my job.

As a Senior Paralegal, my main areas of responsibility include the following:

Patent filing phase:

• Filing direct and national phase patent applications for Canadian and foreign clients
• Filing PCT applications
• Filing formality requirements in the form of assignments, statements of entitlement, exam requests and maintenance fees at the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO)
• Filing US provisional and full applications with the USPTO for our Canadian clients
• Coordinating with foreign associates for filings in other jurisdictions around the world

Patent prosecution phase:

• Reporting Office Actions to clients and preparing draft responses (including figure amendments if required)
• Preparing prior art submissions
• Preparing draft voluntary amendments
• Preparing PPH requests
• Preparing sequence listing submissions

Patent issuance phase: providing reports to clients on:

• Notice of Allowance
• Payment of the final fee
• Certificate of Registration

Industrial designs:

• Filing and prosecution of Canadian industrial design applications
• Filing and prosecution of International Hague Design applications

Plant breeders’ rights:

• Filing and prosecution of Plant Breeders’ Rights applications

On a daily basis, I work closely with different MBM teams on patenting a variety of inventions and exciting new innovations in different industries, which keeps my job interesting, as some of these innovations have the potential to change and improve people’s lives.

I also work closely with our foreign associates to offer seamless service to our clients worldwide. As a result, I have had the privilege of meeting some incredible people from all over the world, learning about their firms, how they structure their systems, manage their workflows, and, as a result, building long-standing relationships with our foreign associates and providing a more efficient service to our clients.

My Approach

I believe that trust and open communication are the foundations of successful working relationships. Knowing you can ask questions and be honest allows me to work effectively with my colleagues at MBM in a way that makes us all feel comfortable, heard, and respected. I have a lot of faith in the people I work with because I know we all respect each other, regardless of how we feel about a particular issue. Outside of the firm, I think it’s even more vital to have effective communication lines. I deal with foreign associates worldwide, and the foundation of my relationships with them is maintaining clear, open communication. I know I can rely on them; they know they can rely on me, which is critical in effective collaboration efforts when we’re representing multinational clients and meeting deadlines.