Our Bennett Jones member

About Bennett Jones

Rob McDonald practices primarily in the areas of intellectual property litigation and enforcement, branding strategy, trademark protection and commercialization, and licensing and exploitation of all forms of IP. This includes advising clients on copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial designs, trade secrets, and confidential information.

Rob has litigated copyright, trademark, and patent infringement actions at various levels of court. He is a trusted advisor to clients with respect to all aspects of the protection, licensing, exploitation and enforcement of their IP and technology. Rob provides IP support with respect to mergers and acquisitions, cross border and international business, financing and other commercial transactions, including conducting due diligence on IP portfolios, analyzing ownership and validity issues, and assessing the strength and breadth of trademark and patent registrations.

Rob is a registered trademark agent in both Canada and the United States. He manages many IP portfolios and brands for local, national and global clients, and is an experienced litigator who enforces and defends client’s valuable IP rights.

Rob’s expertise in Intellectual Property law is highly recognized. In 2023, Rob received the prestigious Distinguished Service Award for Service to the Profession, awarded jointly by the Canadian Bar Association and the Law Society of Alberta. His recent work representing Enviro-Pro Geosynthetics Ltd. in a patent infringement lawsuit has been recognized by Thomson Reuters as a precedent case. Clients benefit from Rob’s extensive knowledge of Intellectual Property law and consistent ability to deliver desirable outcomes.

He is a member of several professional organizations including the International Trademark Association, the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada (Fellow), the Licensing Executives Society, and the Business, Law and Technology Forum, which he co-founded. Rob is also a sessional instructor of the IP Law Course at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law. He has taught this course since 1990. He is an instructor of the Legal Education Society of Alberta Intensive Trial Advocacy Course and the Osgood Hall Masters of Law Program. Rob has delivered IP lectures to the Faculties of Law at Oxford University, the MacEwan University Faculty of Graphic Design, the University of Alberta Faculty of Engineering and Cambridge University as a visiting professor. He was also an instructor at the McGill University and IPIC Intensive Trademarks Course.