Technology

Western Canada’s technology industry is one of the most active in Canada. Lawson Lundell’s Technology Group provides advice to domestic and international technology clients and investors, tailoring our advice and strategies to suit a company’s stage of development, whether emerging, early-stage, high-growth or established. Our lawyers advise clients on all aspects of company formation, financing, acquisitions, divestments through to exit events. We help clients with their intellectual property strategy, IP portfolio development, management and exploitation, helping them leverage and protect their IP in relation to matters involving trade secrets and confidential information, trade-marks, passing off, copyrights and registered designs. We assist financial institutions, venture capital funds, angel investors and corporate VCs with financing technology companies.

Members of our Technology Group are also experienced in assisting foreign technologies with establishing Canadian offices, whether by acquisition of an existing business or through establishing greenfield development offices.

Established and early-stage technology companies rely on us for:

• Business formation
• Capital structure
• Early-stage financing
• IP management, protection and enforcement
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Initial public offerings and other public offerings
• Partnership, joint venture and strategic alliance agreements
• Venture capital fund formation
• Private equity financings
• Debt financing
• Technology licensing and transfer, outsourcing, and software development agreements
• Turnkey systems acquisitions
• Employment and consulting agreements
• Original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and reseller agreements
• Digital media publishing agreements
• Electronic commerce agreements
• Governance

The Technology Group also draws on the firm’s full resources to provide advice to technology clients in employment, privacy, intellectual property, tax and commercial litigation matters. We are involved with the local start-up and technology community through participation in conferences and organizations such as e@UBC, Accelerate Okanagan, Metabridge and Innovation Island.

Our subsector experience includes acting for clients active in digital media and gaming, virtual reality, alternate reality and mixed reality, robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, fintech, blockchain and distributed ledger technologies, e-commerce, SaaS, medical devices, digital imaging, advanced material sciences, industrial technologies, clean technology and battery and energy storage technologies.

Experience

Some of the Technology Group's select experience includes:

Financing Transactions

• SemiosBIO, a Vancouver-based pest management system that uses pesticide-free pheromones, with respect to corporate commercial matters, securities, and licensing and distribution. In addition, we have advised SemiosBIO with several rounds of financing for aggregate gross proceeds of over $10 million; the financings were led by a group of private investors from the Agtech community and assisted by Haywood Securities
• On equity financing transactions at all stages of financing, including advising on early stage financings involving SAFEs, convertible debt and later stage preferred share financings, both on behalf of investors and companies

M&A Transactions

• ZAPI, a manufacturer of electronic speed controllers for application in electric and hybrid vehicles, in its acquisition of Delta-Q, a leader in battery charging solutions for electric vehicles and industrial machines
• OnCore BioPharma on Canadian matters in its announced merger with Tekmira Pharmaceuticals, valued at US $750 million
• Guestfolio, a CRM marketing platform for boutique hotels, and its founders in connection with the sale of Guestfolio to Cendyn Group, LLC, a cloud-based software and services company in the travel and hospitality industry and a portfolio company of Accel-KKR

 Commercial Agreements and Transactions

• Advised Postmedia Network Inc., in relation to a strategic Marketing Collaboration Agreement with Mogo Finance Technology Inc. with a minimum value of $50,000,000 over a three year period. The Agreement is the first of its kind and includes an innovative structure which aligns the interests of both companies
• Drafting and negotiating various commercial agreements, including licensing agreements, software service agreements, subscription agreements, commercial sales agreements, service contracts, joint venture and strategic partnership agreements, royalty agreements, government funding agreements, licensing and other technology commercialization agreements, finder’s fee agreements and investor relations agreements
• Acting for several online businesses in their financing, licensing and joint venture activities, including grants of world-wide licence rights
• Advising start-up companies on company formation, capital structuring and seed financing

Intellectual Property Strategy Formulation and Technology Transfer Experience

• Design, build and roll-out of a corporate IP strategy complete with alternatives and examples for an enforcement philosophy, for a major energy player
• Performed a FTO exercise for a first of its kind commercial scale industrial technology in the energy industry
• Initiated and co-contributed to driving $4 million in (lifecycle) costs out of the global patent portfolio of a technology start-up

Team