Jon is a partner at Aitken Klee recognized by Chambers Global, Lexpert, Benchmark Litigation (Local Litigation Star), Intellectual Asset Management (World’s Leading Patent Litigators) and the Practical Law Company for his expertise and accomplishments in patent litigation. He is named as one of Canada’s leading intellectual property lawyers in The Best Lawyers in Canada (Woodward/White) and is included in The International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers.
Jon is a very experienced litigator, appearing regularly before all levels of Ontario and Federal Courts and in the Supreme Court of Canada. Jon has represented clients in complex intellectual property mandates (patents, trade-marks and copyright); he has litigated a wide variety of patents from pharmaceutical to mechanical. Jon has acted in corporate/commercial and shareholder’s disputes for both public and private companies and their shareholders, business disputes involving both contract and tort claims, fraud claims, share valuations, employment and construction disputes, bankruptcy and insolvency proceedings, receiverships, tax and labour related litigation, product liability claims (including defending class actions) and defamation actions. He has considerable experience as trial counsel, in prosecuting and defending injunctions and other pre-trial remedies, and on appeals and applications for judicial review.
Jon is a member of the Ontario Bar Association, the Advocates’ Society (past Director), and the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada. Jon has taught civil litigation at the Bar Admission Course (Law Society of Upper Canada), advocacy at the Intensive Trial Advocacy Workshop (Osgoode Hall Law School) and Advanced Civil Procedure as an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. Jon speaks regularly at continuing legal education programs on matters related to his areas of practice.
Representative Work
- Counsel for Teva Canada on actions seeking damages under section 8 of the Patented Medicines (Notice of Compliance) Regulations, including two trials in 2016 (relating to Teva-olanzapine and Teva-pregabalin).
- Counsel to the Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association on a number of interventions in appeals before the Supreme Court of Canada.
- Acted for a group of leading American magazine publishers and the Magazine Publishers of America, Inc. in proceedings to enforce their copyright and trade-marks by preventing ongoing infringement through the posting of magazines on “mygazines.com”. The website was designed to encourage the posting of entire magazines, and to promote infringement of the publishers’ intellectual property rights by making the magazines publicly available at no charge. Upon the commencement of proceedings, our clients’ magazines were removed from the website.
- Acting for Teva Canada Limited and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. with respect to a wide variety of matters including pharmaceutical patent infringement actions and injunctions, proceedings under section 6 of the Patented Medicines (Notice of Compliance) Regulations, commercial litigation and judicial review proceedings. Jon was lead counsel on two important patent trials for Teva Canada Limited, in which the challenged patents were held invalid.
- Jon led the team that defended Teva Canada against allegations of infringement of Eli Lilly’s olanzapine compound/selection patent in Canada. This litigation spanned nearly nine years and was the subject of three judgments at each of the Federal Court and the Federal Court of Appeal and involved three Supreme Court leave applications (including one Supreme Court appearance). In the final result the finding that the olanzapine patent is invalid were sustained when the Supreme Court dismissed Lilly’s application for leave to appeal on May 16, 2013. Judgment in the damages case on behalf of Teva Canada against Eli Lilly was released in early 2017, where Teva Canada recovered over $70M.
- More recently, Jon successfully represented both Taro Pharmaceuticals Inc and Teva Canada in patent infringement action brought in respect of the drugs fampridine (FAMPYRA) and tadalafil (CIALIS).
- Successfully resisted a motion for an injunction brought against Warner Bros. by a Winnipeg-based folk band in which the plaintiff sought to prevent the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The Court dismissed the plaintiff’s motion, holding that the release of the movie would not result in passing off and would not damage the plaintiff’s reputation.
- Counsel for a number of individuals, corporations and charitable organizations successfully pursuing defamation claims against various media defendants, including The Globe and Mail, the National Post and CTV. Individual clients include prominent persons in a variety of professions, as well as the winner of a national literary award, whose claim to authorship of his prize-winning work had been challenged.
- Established a precedent by successfully arguing that the right to use a domain name does not constitute “property” in Ontario.
- Significant experience with pre-trial remedies, including injunctions to secure assets pending trial (Mareva injunctions) or to prevent breaches of non-solicitation and non-competition agreements, and Anton Piller orders.
Professional Affiliations
- American Bar Association
- Canadian Bar Association
- Intellectual Property Institute of Canada
- The Advocates’ Society
- The Law Society of Upper Canada (Ontario)
Education
- Bachelor of Laws, University of Toronto (1988)
- Bachelors of Arts, Simon Fraser University (1985)