
Bita consults with clients on intellectual property law matters in different contexts and on privacy law and related data governance. She enjoys working with new entrepreneurs and businesses on their developing needs and considers herself an alchemist in promoting golden experiences with the law and legal services to meet client needs.
- Intellectual Property Law & Strategy
- Privacy
- Law & Technology
- Osgoode Hall (LL.B.)
- University of Toronto (S.J.D.)
- Ontario Call to the Bar (2000)
At Spark Law, the lawyers are all lit up by the life of the law and keen to assist clients in meeting their legal service needs. Whether that is in anticipating and addressing risks, in advancing client growth, or resolving legal disputes, Spark lawyers will work together to get the job done, providing top quality advice in a client friendly manner.
Bita joined Spark Law with the goal of finding new inspiration from practicing with a great group of like-minded, Spark-ly spirited, people all lit up with life and law, while expanding the team’s practice area of service for clients into intellectual property law.
Bita considers herself to be an alchemist and is always looking for new ways to engage the law in the service of alchemy. She has long held an interest in the creative arts, writing, theater and the imaginary, mostly for exploring how these fields capture the human experience. She soon realized that law is another way of examining the human experience and was motivated to interrogate how legal norms imagine lived possibilities.
Bita is a tenured law professor at Queen’s University Faculty of Law where she has been teaching since 2002 and is Co-Director of Feminist Legal Studies Queen’s (since inception). Bita loves the law and new learning opportunities and is ready to take on your legal challenges and opportunities with the same enthusiasm.
She fell in love with the law in high school while doing a co-op placement at a local small law firm in North York. She went on to pursue an undergraduate degree in Sociology from York University (BA, with distinction), an LLB from Osgoode Hall Law School, and skipped over the Masters Degree to earn an SJD (Doctor of Juridical Science) from the University of Toronto, where she was a doctoral fellow of the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (she got to skip the Masters in law).
Bita’s first publications were prize-winning papers in the fields of Trademarks and Copyright (she was writing on geographic indications and the “Philosopher’s Stone” (in 2000), before it became a Harry Potter thing (did we mention she is prescient as well?).
Bita has enjoyed opportunities to engage with diverse people and unique legal issues in complicated contexts, an interest that was first sparked (get it?) by her work at Parkdale Community Legal Clinic as a law student, then developed by working as a summer student for the Ministry of Labour researching and writing a report on delegated administrative organizations, and finally refined by an articling position with a defence insurance law firm in downtown Toronto. Her particular affinity for intellectual property law, however, ultimately brought her back to education and academia.
After her call to the Bar of Ontario (2000), Bita entered directly into a doctoral program in law to work on domestic and international issues in state agency in reconciling competing obligations under human rights and trade instruments at the intersection of biopatenting. At the same time, Bita worked as a consultant with the Ministry of the Attorney General for Ontario as an editor and annotations editor for the E-laws project, the first on-line delivery of Ontario laws. She later served briefly as a legislative drafter for the Office of the Legislative Counsel (not only is she comfortable reading law, she’s competent to write it too!). It was also during these early days that she had her first teaching opportunity as an Adjunct Professor at the Osgoode Hall Law School’s Professional Development Program, Part-time LLM on the International Aspects of Intellectual Property. She remains an adjunct professor at her alma mater, teaching the occasional course on Trade-marks and Unfair Competition (after all, she did—actually—write the book on the subject).
Dr. Amani has served as consultant to the provincial government on gene patenting as a member of the Subcommittee to the Ontario Advisory Committee on Predictive Genetic Technology (2001). Her academic specialization is in the fields of intellectual property, teaching and publishing in trademarks law, copyright, and patent law. She has taught tort law and also teaches information privacy and a feminist legal studies workshop. Current works in progress relate to legal remedies for algorithmic error, AI/robotic socialization, and exploration of issues in food law, policy and governance. She has published widely in the field of intellectual property, including two books, a monograph, State Agency and the Patenting of Life in International Law: Merchants and Missionaries in a Global Society, (Aldershott: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2009) and Trade-marks and Unfair Competition: Cases and Commentary on Canadian Law Second Edition (with Carys Craig), (Toronto: Carswell, 2014).
If you are interested in the impact of recent changes to the Trademarks Act, check out her co-authored article: The Jus of Use: Trademarks in Transition,30(2) Intellectual Property Journal 217 (2018), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3374472.
You can check out her academic website here: https://law.queensu.ca/directory/bita-amani
Upcoming Talks
Recent Talks Delivered
-
ABC Copyright Conference May 25, 2022
“Cultivating Copyright Custodians for the Digital Age: Law, Libraries and the Public Interest in Lending” (with Mark Swartz) https://abccopyright.com/conference-schedule-2022/
-
Queen’s International Women’s Day Conference March 4, 2022
“AI and the Technological Performance of Gender and Care in Care Work”,
Queen’s University, Faculty of Law, Feminist Legal Studies Queen's International Women's Day Conference. -
CANTECH Law 2021 Annual Conference October 21, 2021
Plenary Panel: Designing AI for Equality and Justice: Can it be done and is it Being Done? (with Fion Lee-Madan, Technical Co-Founder of Fairly AI, Susan Lindsay, Counsel at Law Commission of Ontario, and Naveen Mehta (moderator), CLO at Mesh/Diversity)
-
TECHxpo 2021: Reimagine Tomorrow July 20, 2021
“Harnessing AI in Legal Practice: Risks and Opportunities”, TECHxpo 2021: Reimagine Tomorrow, Ontario Bar Association, Speaker, Panel: A Lawyer’s New Best Friend: 10 Ways Artificial Intelligence is Supporting Lawyers Develop Thriving Practices”
Recent Articles
-
April 13, 2022
Canadian IP Scholars’ Joint Letter to the Canadian Government on Copyright Amendments and the Budget Implementation Bill
-
2021
“AI and Equality by Design” Chapter 11, Florian Martin-Bariteau & Teresa Scassa (eds), Artificial Intelligence and the Law in Canada (Toronto: LexisNexis Canada, 2021)
-
September 26, 2021
Canadian IP Scholars’ Joint Submission to the Canadian Government, Consultation on A Modern Copyright Framework for Artificial Intelligence
-
September 26, 2021
Canadian IP Scholars Joint Submission to the Canadian Government, Consultation on a Modern Copyright Framework for the Internet of Things, September 26, 2021,
-
March 31, 2021
Canadian IP Scholars’ Joint Submission to the Canadian Government, Consultation on how to implement Canada’s CUSMA commitment to extend the general term of copyright protection,
-
2018
“The Jus of Use: Trademarks in Transition” (with Carys Craig), (2018) 30 Intellectual Property Journal, 217-270

Books & Monographs
-
2014
Bita Amani and Carys Craig, Trade-marks and Unfair Competition: Cases and Commentary on Canadian Law Second Edition, (Toronto, Canada: Carswell Thomson Reuters, 2014)
-
2011
Bita Amani and Carys Craig, Trade-marks and Unfair Competition: Cases and Commentary on Canadian Law First Edition, (Toronto, Canada: Carswell Thomson Reuters, 2011)
-
2009
Bita Amani, State Agency and the Patenting of Life in International Law: Merchants and Missionaries in a Global Society, (Aldershott: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2009)