I had the honour of
coaching the team that the University of Ottawa sent to the
Harold G. Fox Intellectual Property Moot.
Today, they come home with both the
Gordon F.
Henderson Award for the best factum writers and the
Donald F. Sim
Award for the best oral advocate.
Four University of Ottawa students participated: Adrian Howard and
Sherif Foda argued for the appellant, and Matthew Paik and Tavengwa
Runyowa argued for the respondent. After two preliminary rounds, Adrian
and Sherif advanced to the semi-finals along with only 3 other pairs
out of the 16 pairs participating. They argued their case valiantly
before Justices Sharlow (FCA), Sharpe (Ont CA) and Blair (Ont CA) and
received excellent feedback on their mastery of the material and their
presentation.
For their efforts, Tavengwa and Matt won the Gordon F. Henderson Award
for the best factum writers, and Adrian won the Donald F. Sim Award for
the best oral advocate. Adrian acknowledged the efforts and
accomplishments of the rest of team, noting in his acceptance speech,
"This is an individual award for a group effort". The final round was
McGill (
Pierre-Emmanuel
Moyse coaching) and Western (
Margaret
Ann Wilkinson coaching), and Western's team won the cup.
The University of Ottawa team did very well with a
complex problem
(PDF) on copyright and trade-marks. As their coach, I am very proud
of the team. I am extremely impressed with their research and writing
skills and their ability to internalize the case law in order to
construct new arguments in each round of the moot as they encountered
new teams with novel approaches to the problem.
Adrian Howard is the VP of the
Law &
Technology Student Society, a third year law student, and a future
articling student at
Gowlings
in Ottawa. Sherif Foda is a second year
droit civil student.
Tavengwa Runyowa is a second year
common law student who is
taking online
WIPO IP courses
in his spare time. Matthew Paik is a third year droit civil student in
the
LL.L/DVM
(international development and globalization) program. Congratulations
to each and all!
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