Robbie has business experience in technology firms as well as legal experience with intellectual property litigation.

When you are involved in an intellectual property dispute, whether it be copyright, patents, trade marks, or trade secrets, you should expect your lawyer to understand your business model and your technology as well as you do, and you should expect that he will be able to explain the legal issues in this complex field in clear, practical language – a lawyer who can do that is also a lawyer who can help you to develop a plan forward through both your IP and your business problems.

If your former employee has stolen your confidential information or technology, your lawyer's focus should be on how quickly you can get to court on an injunction application before any more damage is done, what your chances of success are, what it will cost to get there, and what will happen after you take these first steps.

If your patent is being infringed, you don't want a long opinion telling you what you already know – that your patent is being infringed. You want to know is how much it will cost to pursue, how long it will take, and what will be the likely result.

If your trademarks are being abused by a competitor, you don't want to pay for a long legal opinion about the tort of passing off or s. 7 of the Trade-Marks Act – you want to be told how to save your brand before it is too late.

And if you suddenly find yourself being accused of using someone else's brand name, you want clear and practical advice that will get you to a lasting solution as quickly as possible – not something that will later get you investigated under s. 45 of the Competition Act as a criminal allocation of territories, customers, or markets.

Of course, IP is not only about technology – all businesses have intellectual property. Names, recipes, websites, software, business plans and almost everything else that a modern business does has elements of intellectual property.

In all cases, the key to intellectual property disputes is a solid understanding of the IP in issue, combined with a solid understanding of its business context.

Selected judgments and publications:

Google Adwords and Brands