Michelle Nelles

Practice Areas

A highly experienced intellectual property lawyer with a focus on strategic trademark counsel, Michelle works with Canadian and multinational companies to manage large domestic and foreign trademark portfolios.

Michelle offers comprehensive management of trademark portfolios of large international and domestic clients, guiding in-house counsel to develop and execute cost-effective prosecution, enforcement and opposition strategies. She regularly provides clearance opinions, oppositions and enforcement advice, and her work on trademark, patent, industrial design and copyright matters extends across industries, including consumer goods, food, clothing, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and financial services.

Michelle also provides strategic advice to clients on a wide variety of domain name issues, as well as initiating and responding to domain name dispute proceedings, including ICANN’s Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP), the CIRA Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (CDRP) and the Rapid Evaluation Service (RES).

Michelle is a registered Canadian patent and trademark agent and is routinely involved in reviewing marketing and advertising materials to advise on compliance with trademark laws and regulatory regimes. She frequently gives guidance on best practices and develops training materials to support clients’ intellectual property and business priorities.