Ainslie Parsons

Ainslie is a partner with Bereskin & Parr LLP and the leader of the Plant Breeders' Rights practice group. Ainslie’s practice focuses on life sciences matters, including patents, licensing, and related litigation. She works closely with clients in preparing and prosecuting patent applications relating to pharmaceuticals, biologics, diagnostics, biotechnology and plant technologies. She has experience in the analysis of patent issues such as validity, infringement and freedom to operate. Ainslie also advises on plant variety rights and prepares and files Plant Breeders’ Rights applications. She has worked on matters involving Food and Drugs Act compliance.

While obtaining her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, Ainslie conducted research directed to identifying the mode-of-action of small molecules using genomic technologies.

Ainslie has authored a number of professional papers including, "Exploring the mode-of-action of bioactive compounds by chemical-genetic profiling in yeast" published in Cell and "The integration of chemical-genetic and genetic interaction data links bioactive compounds to cellular target pathways," published in Nature Biotechnology. She was also a distance instructor for IPIC’s Patent Agent Training Course (Infringement and Validity Module) in March - April 2022.

Ainslie is the recipient of the CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Research) Canada Graduate Scholarship Doctoral Award and the NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Post-Graduate Scholarship. In February 2022, Ainslie joined the Advisory Board of the Technology Access Centre Advisory Committee for the Centre for Natural Products and Medical Cannabis at Loyalist College of Applied Arts & Technology.