Information Technology

There’s a lot riding on your technology projects – whether it is a system upgrade, complete overhaul or major acquisition. Leading corporations throughout Canada and internationally choose the Cassels Brock Information Technology team of lawyers for closing sophisticated transactions and staying on the right side of complex regulations.

Our clients benefit from our expertise and experience including:

• Market sensitive pricing - quite simply, we offer better value than other firms of a similar size.
• Getting the human side of the project right - clients rely on our lawyers’ ability to handle a project delicately and with an eye on the motivations on all sides of the table.
• Practical risk assessment and an appropriate response - Our tech lawyers constantly help clients factor in the short and long-term strategic needs of the company and its priorities. We triage where to spend your time and money and where to put our effort based on the likelihood of a return.
• Business-minded, backed up with a solid understanding of technologies - Good tech lawyers know the law and the technology. Great tech lawyers know the law and the technology and keep their clients’ business needs uppermost in mind. Our team of lawyers includes both engineers and MBAs.

Cassels Brock counsels both public and private clients in all sectors of the economy who develop, distribute, use or acquire technology. These include financial service institutions, significant software vendors, major retailers, e-commerce companies, post-secondary educational institutions and hospitals.  Our services include:

• Licences, contracts, technology transfer and other agreements related to software, hardware and information systems generally
• Technology aspects of commercial transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, distribution agreements, joint ventures, strategic alliances
• Financing of new ventures
• Internet and e-business advice, from software development to disclaimers to cross jurisdictional matters
• Advice on and creation of appropriate documentation
• Employment agreements, structure of option plans to protect ownership of technology
• Dispute resolution related to use or ownership of technology
• New legal developments, such as the new government initiatives in the area of privacy of personal information

Representative Work

Our strength is crafting commercial licensing, outsourcing, joint venture and other technology distribution agreements.  Examples of representative transactions in which we have been involved include:

• When a tech client needed to drive down the cost of a deal, it came with a price: our lawyers had just 24 hours to wrap up the legal side of things — we boiled matters down to their essentials, focused on the big-risk items and successfully negotiated seven complex documents in one day, closing the deal on time and coming through for the client
• A provider of radio and television ratings was considering a joint venture with the leading provider of television audience measurement and related services worldwide — one of the members of our team advised the company about information technology aspects of the deal, creating a single consistent measurement system for the television industry in Canada
• In a transaction valued at approximately $310 million, a major multi-national insurance company got the advice it needed on information technology during its acquisition of an insurance company
• A leading global business communications corporation needed help during its acquisition of a premier developer of embedded, peer-to-peer call-processing software — a member of our team advised on intellectual property and information and technology issues (the deal closed for $46 million)

In addition, our tech lawyers have drafted and negotiated the system acquisition documentation for digital diagnostic imaging systems for several Ontario hospitals, including the negotiation of a multi-hospital wide area network equipment lease and bandwidth supply agreement. The firm’s clients also often turn to our tech lawyers for advice about privacy issues, including compliance with proposed Ontario privacy legislation.