Annette Latoszewska

Intellectual Property Lawyer

Overview

Annette understands the value of intellectual property assets in today’s economy and made the move to intellectual property law to utilize her experience and education in the sciences to help innovators and creative professionals secure protection for their inventions, trademarks, and copyright-eligible works. Annette’s pre-law education enables her to work with inventors to draft patent applications that both accurately describe their inventions and secure effective and expansive protection of their intellectual property rights.

Patents

Annette has experience conducting prior art searches and providing opinions on patentability to educate clients on the likelihood of obtaining patent protection for their invention and inform strategic decision-making relating to intellectual property assets.

Annette also has experience preparing U.S. and Canadian patent applications for a variety of mechanical inventions and responding to and successfully overcoming examiner objections from the respective patent offices during the patent’s prosecution.

Trademarks

Annette has experience conducting U.S. and Canadian trademark availability searches and responding to a wide variety of examiner objections to trademarks and applications to advance the registration of clients’ proposed or existing trademarks. By successfully overcoming such objections, Annette helps protect clients’ investments in their trademarks and broader brand.

Intellectual Property Contracts

Annette has assisted in the review of various intellectual property contracts to identify gaps and unfavourable provisions for clients as well as suggest revisions and additions aimed at maximally protecting the client’s interests.

Intellectual Property Litigation

Annette has been involved in patent, trademark, and copyright litigation matters. She has drafted cease-and-desist letters to be delivered on behalf of clients whose intellectual property rights are being or have been infringed. She also supports litigation matters by conducting meticulous legal research to understand the relevant legal landscapes.

Annette has also helped clients avoid litigation by ensuring a proposed activity does not infringe an existing patent or fall within the scope of a pending patent application. In her third year at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, Annette completed an externship with the Structural Genomics Consortium. Her work included the preparation of a freedom to operate opinion assessing the patent landscape as it relates to the use of several candidate chemical compounds for the treatment of childhood cancer, DIPG. Annette’s favourable opinion brought the group one step closer to a treatment for this fatal disease.

Past Legal Employment

Annette returned to Heer Law as an articling student after first joining the firm in 2019 as a summer student.

Legal Education

Annette graduated from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. While in law school, Annette was an executive member of the Technology and Intellectual Property Group, engaged in bringing current topics and esteemed professionals in intellectual property law to the law school. Annette was also Head of Fundraising and subsequently Head of Communications for the national chapter of the First Generation Network.

Annette developed her oral advocacy skills representing clients of the Downtown Legal Services legal clinic before Toronto’s criminal courts in her second year, and in her third year was awarded 2nd place for her and her teammate’s written submissions in the Adam F. Fanaki Competition Law Moot.

Pre-Law Education

Annette graduated with high distinction from the University of Toronto having obtained an Honours Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Physiology.