Stephanie Chong

Intellectual Property Lawyer, Trademark Agent, Partner

Overview

Stephanie Chong is a Partner at Heer Law. Her practice focuses on the strategic acquisition, management and enforcement of trademark and other IP rights. Stephanie advises entities ranging from small-and medium-sized enterprises to large multi-nationals.

She represents clients in proceedings before the Trademarks Opposition Board, as well as the Ontario and Federal Courts. Stephanie is also a registered trademark agent. In addition to her many years of experience in private practice, Stephanie has had the opportunity to serve as Interim Counsel, Patents and Trademarks, for one of Canada’s largest pharmaceutical companies.

Stephanie regularly serves in leadership positions in various professional organizations. She was the first racialized person to be elected as President of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada (IPIC), the leading national organization for IP professionals. She was also the inaugural Chair of IPIC’s Indigenous IP Committee. Stephanie is a Past Chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s Intellectual Property Section. Stephanie has been appointed as the sole Canadian member of the inaugural Belonging & Inclusion Council of the International Trademark Association (INTA). She has also served as a Subcommittee Chair for INTA’s Trademark Office Practices Committee.

Stephanie is frequently invited to speak on various IP topics and has written many articles and academic papers for both national and international publications including authoring a chapter for a textbook on IP litigation. One of Stephanie’s papers was cited by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Harvard Mouse case, Harvard College v. Canada (Commissioner of Patents), [2004] 4 S.C.R. 45, the leading Canadian case on the patentability of higher life forms. The results of her research for her Masters of Law degree (a comparative study on the laws relating to famous trademarks) were published in The Trademark Reporter.

Stephanie is fluent in English and has an advanced level of proficiency in French, having obtained her DALF (Diplôme Approfondi de Langue Française), Level C1 under the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. She has attained the HSK 2-3 (lower intermediate) level in Mandarin Chinese and also speaks elementary German.

When not practicing law, Stephanie volunteers for various community initiatives and actively mentors young lawyers and law students. In her free time, she enjoys hiking up mountains in the summer and skiing down them in the winter.