Startups & Korea–Canada Collaboration

Harmony Law helps technology companies protect what they build and grow across borders. With a founder who worked as a scientist and researcher in Korean and multinational industry before practising intellectual property law, the firm brings a combination rarely found in one place: scientific understanding, IP and corporate legal expertise, and genuine bilingual, bicultural fluency between Canada and South Korea.

We work with founders, startups, and established technology companies — particularly those moving between the Canadian and Korean markets, where legal systems, language, and business culture all differ.

Building a company is hard enough without untangling legal complexity along the way. Harmony Law supports startups from formation through growth, with practical advice that fits an early-stage budget and timeline.

Our work for founders includes:

• Incorporation and structure — setting up your company correctly from the outset, including share structure and founder arrangements.
• Shareholder and co-founder agreements — defining ownership, control, and what happens when circumstances change.
• Intellectual property protection — trademarks, and strategy for protecting the ideas and brand at the core of your business.
• Commercial contracts — customer, supplier, licensing, and partnership agreements.
• Investment and financing — reviewing and structuring the terms of raising capital.

Harmony Law has a particular focus on the corridor between Canada and South Korea — helping Korean companies establish and commercialize in Canada, and supporting Canadian ventures as they pursue Korean partners and markets.

International collaborations rarely fail because of the technology. More often, they falter at the legal and commercial layer: who owns jointly developed intellectual property, how technology is licensed across borders, and how partnership and investment agreements hold up across two distinct legal systems and languages. This is where the firm adds value — treating IP not as a defensive filing exercise, but as a commercial asset structured for joint development and market entry.

We assist with:

Market entry — establishing Korean companies in Canada
Cross-border IP strategy — ownership, licensing, and technology-transfer terms in international R&D collaborations and businesses
Partnership and joint-development agreements — structured to allocate rights and responsibilities clearly between partners.
Bilingual counsel — advice and documents delivered in English and Korean.

The firm advises companies across emerging technology fields, with particular experience in artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous systems — the areas now broadly described as physical AI, where software meets physical hardware.

Beyond client work, Harmony Law’s founder, Kwang Hoon Shin, is active in the Canada–Korea innovation community:

• Advisory Counsel to the Association of Korean Canadian Scientists and Engineers (AKCSE), and Legal Advisor at its annual Canada–Korea Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation (CKC).
• Head of Legal Affairs for the Korean Canadian Innovation Centre (KCIC), a not-for-profit dedicated to strengthening innovation and commercialization partnerships between the two countries.

These roles keep the firm connected to researchers, entrepreneurs, and institutions on both sides of the corridor — and informed about where Canadian and Korean innovation priorities are heading.