D. Lynne Watt

Lynne Watt is a partner practising in Gowling WLG's Ottawa office. Her areas of expertise are commercial litigation, copyright (in particular, the certification of tariffs under the Copyright Act and copyright infringement claims), and appellate advocacy. She is the leader of Gowling WLG's Supreme Court of Canada Services Group.

Lynne has appeared before a variety of tribunals and in all levels of court in Ontario, the Federal Court, the Federal Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada. Lynne has represented clients in a wide variety of commercial litigation matters, including contract disputes, enforcing proprietary rights and intellectual property, shareholder and executive disputes, and oppression remedy proceedings. She has participated in numerous mediations and arbitrations and settled the vast majority of cases in which her clients have been involved.

With respect to copyright matters, Lynne appears regularly in proceedings before the Copyright Board of Canada and in judicial review proceedings and appeals of those decisions to the Federal Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada.

As a member of the firm's Supreme Court of Canada Services Group, she prepares applications for leave to appeal, represents clients on appeals and motions in the Supreme Court and advises counsel on all aspects of Supreme Court practice and procedure. She is an author of the text Supreme Court of Canada Practice (Thomson Reuters).

Lynne currently sits on the board of directors of Musicfest Canada, an annual national event that brings together thousands of Canada's finest young musicians who perform for recognition as the country's foremost musical ensembles. Lynne was previously a member of the board of trustees of the County of Carleton Law Association from 2009 through 2018. She was president of the CCLA in 2016-17 and past president in 2017-18.

Lynne was a member of the board of directors of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute from 2006 to 2014, where she sat on the Executive Committee and served as chair of its Government Relations Committee. She was also formerly on the board of directors of the Canadian Hearing Society from 1997 to 2002, serving as chair of that board from 2000 to 2002.

Lynne has been a lecturer and course director of the IPIC Copyright Master Class at the McGill School of Continuing Studies. She supervised fellows in the Dean's Research and Writing Fellowship at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law for a number of years and was also an adjunct professor at the law school teaching trial advocacy. She is a frequent speaker and instructor in continuing legal education courses for the Advocates Society and for the CCLA.

In 2021 and 2022, Managing Intellectual Property (MIP) named Lynne to its global list of "Top 250 Women in IP"; she has been named an IP Star (Copyright) in 2020, 2021 and 2022; Lexpert/ROB "Canada's Leading Litigation Lawyers" in 2018; and the Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory every year since 2018.