Norton Rose Fulbright’s latest tech tool by award-winning team answers questions on Canada’s new trademark law

Global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright’s multi-award-winning national knowledge management team has developed a chatbot to help brand owners better understand the upcoming amendments to Canada’s Trade-marks Act, which come into force on June 17. This is the newest in a series of legal technology tools created by our Toronto-based senior lawyers.

Sukesh Kamra, national director of the knowledge management team, said:

“Legal technology is changing the way we practise and how we serve our clients. We are proactively using advanced technology to design processes and provide innovative tools to help clients reduce risk, improve efficiency and increase collaboration.”

Lorelei Graham, trademark agent and partner in the intellectual property practice, said:

“Creating a chatbot with our team of in-house experts on the most significant changes to Canada’s trademark law in over 50 years made sense because clients expect us to think outside the box. The Trade-marks Act is bringing Canada in line with international treaties. Receiving relevant information in a sophisticated and accessible manner will help clients better prepare for some of these key changes.”

Named NRF Parker, the chatbot is a computer program that simulates human conversation using natural language. The tool answers a variety of questions related to the substantial changes to the Canadian trademark landscape that will allow Canada to implement the Madrid Protocol and apply the Nice Classification, as well as streamline the registration process for brand owners.

NRF Parker is the second chatbot developed by the Canadian national knowledge management team led by Sukesh Kamra, which includes senior lawyers Michelle Fernando and Al Hounsell. 

Created last year, the first chatbot responded to questions on the new mandatory Canadian data breach laws and regulations that came into effect under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) on November 1, 2018. Our firm’s chatbots are not personal assistants like Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home, but rather information guides designed to answer key questions built on an interactive platform.

Over the last three years, Norton Rose Fulbright’s knowledge management team has built a suite of tools such as the Critical Injury Check App and NRF ContractorCheck, which helps organizations accurately characterize their people to manage risk.

These applications are available on a fully customizable client innovation portal that sits on a HighQ platform and has earned our firm and national knowledge management team six prestigious international awards:  

• InnovAction Award, College of Law Practice Management 2016 
• Knowledge Management Professional of the Year Award (Sukesh Kamra), International Legal Technology Association 2017 
• Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers (Sukesh Kamra), Changemakers: Leaders, Innovators or Catalysts category, Canadian Lawyer 2018 
• Knowledge Management Fellowship Award (Sukesh Kamra), College of Law Practice Management 2017 
• Knowledge Management Leadership Award, World HRD Congress 2018 
• Digital Workplace Management, third place, We.CONECT Intra.NET Reloaded Awards 2018