Biography: Trademarks

Gordon Zimmerman is a partner in the Toronto office of Borden Ladner Gervais LLP. He practises exclusively in the area of intellectual property, including patents, trademarks, copyright, industrial designs, trade secrets and confidential information, and related litigation.

He was the gold medallist in science upon graduation with a BSc (Chemistry) from the University of Waterloo. While obtaining his LLB from the University of Toronto Law School, he received a JDS Tory Fellowship for legal writing (the Science Court) and the PRO Canada Copyright Award for a paper on punitive damages. He also received a diploma in Civil Law/Common Law Studies from Dalhousie University and the University of Sherbrooke before being called to the Bar in Ontario in 1982. His pre-law work experience was in the fields of pulp and paper, industrial chemicals, atomic energy, vacuum molecular beam studies and peptide analysis.

He is certified by the Law Society of Upper Canada as a specialist in intellectual property (patents, trademarks and copyright) law, and a registered patent and trademark agent. A fellow of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada, he is past chair of the Canadian Bar Association Trademarks Committee and its Ad Hoc Committee on Security Interests in Intellectual Property. He is also a member of ABA, LES, IPBA, and IBA.

Gordon has been a lecturer annually since 1997 at the IPIC/McGill advanced trademark and patent courses in Montreal. He has been an invited speaker to various groups including IPIC, CBA, IPBA, LSUC, NYSBA, LES, CICBV, IT-CAN, commercial conferences, and university and community college classes. He speaks English, French and Italian and some German and Spanish.