Get to Know Us Better.

An Interview

with Colin.

Beyond our credentials, what sets us apart are the values we share and the ways we work. Every member of our team has a passion for giving back and helping organizations reach their goals. It’s why clients often tell us that when they met our people, they knew they wanted to do business with us.

To help you get to know us a little better, we sat down with some of our team members and interviewed them on everything from professional experience and obstacles to extracurricular activities and playlist recommendations. We thought you may appreciate seeing the personal side of our team through their shared personal insights, recommendations and hobbies.

What do you like to listen to while working?

Classical music.

Do you have any recommendations?

• Couperin - Harpsichord works

• Bruckner - Symphonies

• Bach - Organ works

• Durufle - Choral and Organ works

What are your favourite business books, podcasts, and blogs?

• Honesty Sells – Steven Gaffney and Coleen Francis 

• Why Businessmen Need Philosophy – Debi Ghate and Richard E. Ralston Editors

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen R. Covey

Who are you most influenced by?

My family and friends, who, by pursuing their lives with intelligence, humanity, rationality, and passion, remind me every day that joy is found in the effort and achievement of living.

Also: John Locke, Carl Sagan, Adam Smith, Carl Jung, Ayn Rand, and Joseph Campbell

What is one piece of advice you find yourself constantly sharing with your clients?

Do not confuse the invention with the contraption
In the course of solving a specific problem in some unique context, a client, without knowing it, will often invent something much broader and potentially more fundamental than the particular implemented solution. I like to remind the client that the specific ‘contraption’ they’ve designed is only one example of that broader invention.

How do you add value to your clients?

As an IP professional, I help clients identify, secure, and profit from the property rights in intellectual assets they have created, adding a multiplicity of values and opportunities associated with those assets which otherwise would be lost.

What do you think makes Stratford unique?

Stratford’s philosophy and culture of ‘abundance’ fosters a win-win environment both internally and externally, implies that what lies at the heart of any successful business is the creation of wealth, and encourages dealings which are exchanges of value for value to mutual gain.

What is your favourite type of client engagement?

That would be any engagement with my favourite type of client: one who is thoughtful, engaged, fair, and reasonable. They believe, as I do, that every successful business relationship is defined by the exchange of values and requires mutual respect, honesty, and professionalism.

What are some of your favourite past times?

• Digital Painting

• Playing Piano

• Enjoying the great outdoors with friends and family

Any recommended movies or TV programs?

For me, “The Tree of Life” by Terrence Malick, is truly a masterpiece

What’s one of the biggest obstacles you’ve had to overcome as it relates to your career?

Coming out of Law School, I had expected every professional, especially those in senior roles, to possess integrity, and in all their dealings, always to be honest, rational, professional, and moral. Navigating and accepting the realities of the incorrectness of that expectation has been difficult. After years of dealing with behaviours and requests, I have embraced my responsibility to choose who I deal with and on what basis. Some of these obstacles of the past are why I am so satisfied with my current arrangement with Stratford!
Passing the Patent Agent exams was no cake walk either!

 Do you have any favourite quotes?

It is the eternal struggle between two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says ‘you toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.

-Abraham Lincoln

Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man’s right to the product of his mind.

-Ayn Rand

Follow your bliss.

-Joseph Campbell

If there is one thing you hope your clients gain from working with you, what would you want it to be?

Other than the profit to the innovative client which the engagement represents, I would hope that the client gains from me a sense of respect, gratitude, and admiration, a sense that someone appreciates that the creation of wealth through productive work in the pursuit of their values and in growing and maintaining their business, is truly a worthy undertaking, most admirable, right, and good.
Business is beautiful!