Canada’s Intellectual Property Firm

Smart & Biggar celebrates six Rising Stars and seven Notable Practitioners named in the 2025 MIP IP Stars

Smart & Biggar is pleased to announce that our practitioners have been honoured as Rising Stars and Notable Practitioners in the 2025 Managing IP (MIP) IP Stars.  

Congratulations to the six practitioners named Rising Stars, which recognizes the best up-and-coming IP practitioners globally.  

  • Christie Bates
  • Toba Cooper
  • Laura Easton
  • Jamie-Lynn Kraft
  • Kwan T. Loh
  • Joanna Ma

Seven practitioners were lauded Notable Practitioners for their expertise and status. 

  • Daniel Anthony 
  • Jean-Sébastien Dupont
  • Christine Genge
  • Lynn Ing
  • Guillaume Lavoie Ste-Marie
  • Scott Pundsack
  • Alice Tseng 

This high praise follows the firm’s success at the MIP Americas Awards 2025 in April where we received Canadian Firm of the Year awards for Patent Prosecution and Copyright, and Impact Case of the Year (Tekna v AP&C, 2024 FC 871).  Principal Christian Bolduc was named Canadian Practitioner of the Year (Trademark Prosecution), and Principal Guillaume Lavoie Ste-Marie was named Canadian Practitioner of the Year (Copyright). In June, Smart & Biggar was also recognized as Tier 1 firm, with 21 practitioners named IP Stars.  

The full list of MIP IP Rising Stars is available to view online.