Overview

A highly experienced intellectual property lawyer with a focus on strategic trademark counsel, Michelle works with Canadian and multinational companies to manage large domestic and foreign trademark portfolios.
Michelle offers comprehensive management of trademark portfolios of large international and domestic clients, guiding in-house counsel to develop and execute cost-effective prosecution, enforcement and opposition strategies. She regularly provides clearance opinions, oppositions and enforcement advice, and her work on trademark, patent, industrial design and copyright matters extends across industries, including consumer goods, food, clothing, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and financial services.
Michelle also provides strategic advice to clients on a wide variety of domain name issues, as well as initiating and responding to domain name dispute proceedings, including ICANN’s Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP), the CIRA Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (CDRP) and the Rapid Evaluation Service (RES).
Michelle is a registered Canadian patent and trademark agent and is routinely involved in reviewing marketing and advertising materials to advise on compliance with trademark laws and regulatory regimes. She frequently gives guidance on best practices and develops training materials to support clients’ intellectual property and business priorities.
Michelle is currently the Canadian Chair of the Non-Traditional Marks Committee for the International Trademark Association (INTA). She has served on numerous INTA committees over the past two decades. She has also been active on Intellectual Property Institute of Canada (IPIC) committees. For example, she presented the Year in Review (Trademarks) at the 2020 IPIC Annual Meeting. In 2021, she presented at the 25th Intellectual Property Year in Review for The Law Society of Ontario.
Michelle has also lectured on aspects of IP law at the Faculty of Law and Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto and Osgoode Hall Law School, and at York University in Toronto for their LLM Course.
Osgoode Hall Law School and Schulich School of Business, York University
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Practice Areas

• Intellectual Property

Bar Information

Called to the bar: 1995 (ON)