FEDERAL COURT JUDICIAL APPOINTMENT ANNOUNCED

OTTAWA, October 5, 2012 - The Honourable Rob Nicholson, P.C., Q.C., M.P. for Niagara Falls, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, today announced the following appointment:

The Honourable Michael D. Manson, a lawyer with Smart & Biggar in Vancouver, is appointed a Judge of the Federal Court, to replace Mr. Justice D.R. Campbell, who elected to become a supernumerary judge as of January 1, 2011.

Mr. Justice Manson received a Bachelor of Science in 1976 from McGill University and a Diploma in Education in 1978. He received a Bachelor Laws from the University of British Columbia in 1982. He was admitted to the Bars of Ontario in 1984 and British Columbia in 1995.

Mr. Justice Manson has been with the firm Smart & Biggar, both in Ottawa and Vancouver, since 1982 and a partner since 1995. He became a registered trade-mark agent in 1984 and a registered patent agent in 1989. His main area of practice was intellectual property law.

Mr. Justice Manson was a member of both the Canadian Bar Association and the International Bar Association. He was a Fellow of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada and of the Litigation Counsel of America. He was an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Victoria for 15 years and also at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of more than one hundred articles and papers on intellectual property, trade-mark patents and copyright law. He was a frequent speaker to various organizations nationally and internationally. He was selected Vancouver Intellectual Property Law Lawyer of the Year by Best Lawyers; Preeminent IP Litigation Lawyer in British Columbia by Benchmark Canada, The Definitive Guide to Canada’s Leading Litigation Firms and Attorneys; and Canadian Outstanding IP Practitioner by Managing Intellectual Property, all in 2012.

This appointment is effective immediately.

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