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Richard Whissell is
a registered trade-mark agent since 1999. His practice encompasses
all aspects of client counseling and portfolio management
including trademark clearance, opinion work, trade-mark
application drafting and prosecution through to registration, and
handling all aspects of Opposition proceedings. He has also helped
to amicably settled trade-mark disputes and has drafted many
effective settlement and coexistence agreements. Richard holds a
degree in Management Information systems (Informatique de
gestion), from the Université du Québec en Outaouais,
where he gained knowledge of internet technologies and database
analysis, modelization, and normalization to the third normal
form, boulean algebra, and large project management.
Prior to joining
MacRae, Richard was a Trade-Marks Examiner with the Canadian
Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) of the Canadian Government
from 1994 to 1998, where he prosecuted a very large number of
applications. Richard was also on special assignment as Web
Site Coordinator and Promotion Coordinator with CIPO's
Marketing and Communications Branch for 9 months, where he
assisted in the drafting of promotional materials, contributed
articles to the CIPO newsletter, and was responsible for web-site
promotion and content creation at a time when the CIPO web site
required a review. While at CIPO, Richard also assisted in
many special projects, including user testing on behalf of the
Examination Division during the expansion of the Trade-Mark
Office's internal database management system (INTREPID II),
assisted in the design, testing and implementation of the Online
Canadian Trade-Marks Database, and represented CIPO at numerous
Federal Government trade-shows across Canada.
Richard was also an
invited speaker at CIPO's Second and Third International
Trade-Mark Training Programs in 1998 and 1999, which were
sponsored jointly by the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO)
and CIPO, where he gave presentations and workshops on trade-mark
examination practice and procedures to trade-mark office officials
representing Latin American, Caribbean, and Asia-Pacific nations.
Richard won special merit awards for this and other special
projects while with CIPO.
Being fully
bilingual in English and in French, which is his first language,
Richard can file applications, handle Oppositions and draft
agreements in either official language. He has worked extensively
in Canadian trade-mark matters for several large international
clients in the areas of hospitality, luxury tobacco products and
spirits, and a very large Ministry of the Canadian Federal
Government, in addition to handling many matters for clients in
the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, retail, telecommunications and
software fields. He has also worked closely with industry experts,
most recently in the area of nationwide surveys for evidence
purposes.
Richard is an
associate member of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada
(IPIC), a Commissioner Of Oaths in and for the province of Quebec,
and has participated in various IPIC comittees such as the
Trade-Mark Legislation Committee. |
