Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Ownership and alleged misappropriation of intellectual property and confidential information generated by Concordia’s Starsailor rocketry project
• Claimed breaches of the employment agreement, including exclusivity, IP, confidentiality and disclosure-of-conflict clauses by the former Program Leader of Space Concordia
• Use of Polaris promotional and bid materials that allegedly misrepresent Polaris as owner of Starsailor-derived technology and experience
• Reliance by Polaris’s federal bid on lessons, data and technological advances said to be foundationally drawn from Concordia’s Starsailor work
• Alleged violation of the employee’s duty of loyalty and confidentiality under article 2088 CCQ through parallel work, leaking information and diverting partners
• Application of the criteria for urgent provisional injunctive relief, including strong appearance of right, irreparable harm, balance of inconvenience and urgency tied to an imminent federal proposal deadline

Facts of the case

Concordia University’s Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science has for years hosted Space Concordia, a student-run but university-anchored rocketry initiative. Through this platform, Concordia led the Starsailor project, which culminated in the August 2025 launch of what was touted as the first liquid-fuel rocket launched from Canadian soil in twenty-five years. The project drew on the work of hundreds of students, faculty members and staff, and was heavily supported through university resources, facilities, administration, donors and public funds. Concordia maintains that Starsailor generated significant intellectual property and confidential technical know-how, which fall under its Intellectual Property Policy.
Within this ecosystem, Oleg Khalimonov occupied a central role. A long-time Concordia student, he became Program Leader for Space Concordia in September 2023, earning more than $90,000 annually. His job description placed him at the operational and strategic core of Concordia’s rocketry activities: supervising student teams, overseeing design, construction and launch of a liquid-fuel rocket, managing test plans and technical progress, liaising with regulators and launch service providers, and coordinating safety, regulatory compliance and permits. Through this role he obtained wide-ranging access to Concordia’s confidential technical data, project documents and strategic information concerning the Starsailor program.
At the same time, and unbeknownst to Concordia at hiring, Mr. Khalimonov was a founder, director, officer and shareholder of Polaris Aerospace Inc. Polaris is a private company operating in the same emerging launch sector. Concordia only learned of this dual status in December 2025. The employment agreement signed by Mr. Khalimonov contained an exclusivity clause requiring him to devote his professional time exclusively to Concordia, express undertakings regarding disclosure of outside conflicts or concurrent business interests, and strict obligations in relation to intellectual property and proprietary information. The agreement also incorporated Concordia’s Conflict of Interest Policy and its Intellectual Property Policy by reference.
As Concordia’s aerospace profile rose after the Starsailor launch, potential corporate partners and donors began to alert the university that Polaris was presenting itself in the market as having acquired Space Concordia’s intellectual property, and was claiming to be the only Canadian team to have built and flown a large liquid-fuel rocket engine, expressly invoking the Starsailor heritage. In response, Concordia arranged meetings with Polaris and Mr. Khalimonov, each side represented by seasoned counsel. On 16 December 2025, Concordia wrote formally to raise serious concerns that his role in Polaris, overlapping with his role as Program Leader, might breach his employment agreement and Concordia’s IP and Conflict of Interest policies. Within two days, on 18 December 2025, he resigned, while asserting that he intended to respect his surviving contractual obligations.
Concordia’s lawyers then issued a demand letter reminding him of his ongoing duties of confidentiality, IP protection and loyalty, and demanding the return, within 72 hours, of all materials, documents and confidential information belonging to the university. Despite this, on 29 December 2025, Polaris filed a proposal (the Polaris Proposal) under the federal Department of National Defence’s “Launch the North: Accelerating Canada’s sovereign access to space” competition, a three-year initiative worth $105 million in funding. Polaris filed while the dispute over IP and confidentiality was already live and counsel-driven, and while Concordia insisted that its materials be returned.
Concordia was simultaneously preparing its own bid under Launch the North. The call for proposals was set to close at noon on 9 January 2026, only hours after the hearing that produced this judgment. Concerned that Polaris’s proposal built on Starsailor-derived intellectual property and confidential know-how, Concordia filed an Application on 6 January 2026, seeking urgent provisional injunctive relief to protect its asserted ownership of the Starsailor technology and to prevent Polaris from using or presenting that technology as its own in the federal competition.

Key contractual and policy terms in dispute

The court’s analysis is anchored in Concordia’s written employment agreement with Mr. Khalimonov and the university policies incorporated into that agreement. Under the exclusivity clause, he undertook to devote his professional time exclusively to Concordia, which is incompatible with simultaneously directing and managing a parallel, potentially competing aerospace venture. The agreement imposed disclosure duties for outside business interests and conflicts of interest, backed by formal conflict-of-interest undertakings intended to ensure transparency at the outset of the employment relationship and to allow Concordia to manage or decline conflicted engagements.
Section 7.07 of the contract imposed stringent obligations concerning intellectual property and confidential information. These included holding all Concordia proprietary information and IP in strict confidence during and after employment, not using that information for personal benefit or for the benefit of any third party, refraining from disclosure without prior written consent, returning all proprietary materials on termination, and acknowledging that any IP developed or accessed during employment was the exclusive property of Concordia. The agreement also bound him to comply with the university’s Conflict of Interest Policy and its IP Policy.
Concordia’s IP Policy, referenced in the contract and publicly available, provides that “Inventors” of “Qualifying Inventions” automatically assign the “Intellectual Property of such Invention” to Concordia. On the motion, the court did not attempt a detailed definitional analysis, but was prepared, at least on a strong prima facie basis, to regard Starsailor as a “Qualifying Invention” and to treat Mr. Khalimonov as an “Inventor” under the policy. On that footing, intellectual property in the Starsailor project would be owned by Concordia, not by Polaris or Mr. Khalimonov personally.
In addition to contractual and policy-based duties, article 2088 of the Civil Code of Québec imposes on employees an obligation of loyalty and confidentiality during and, to some extent, after employment. The court ultimately concluded that the alleged misappropriation of confidential and proprietary information, use of Concordia’s technology for a competing venture, and diversion of Concordia’s partners and business opportunities breached this codal duty as well as the written contract and policies.

Alleged misuse of intellectual property and confidential information

The evidentiary crux for the provisional injunction lay in what Polaris and Mr. Khalimonov did with Concordia-derived know-how. Concordia filed a Polaris PowerPoint presentation that had been circulated to potential business partners and to the Department of National Defence. The court described it as containing ambiguous and, in its view, misleading representations. The presentation repeatedly used the pronoun “our” in connection with technology and experience emerging from the Starsailor project, creating a strong impression that Polaris itself owned or had acquired Starsailor-related technology. This elided the distinction between Polaris and Space Concordia and suggested that Polaris, not Concordia, controlled the underlying IP.
The Polaris Proposal submitted to Launch the North added to the court’s concerns. While a complete expert-level technical comparison between Starsailor designs and the Polaris technology was impossible within the severe time constraints, the judge emphasized that the legal test for provisional injunctive relief did not require a definitive resolution of ownership or exact technological overlap. Instead, the question was whether there was strong prima facie evidence that the Polaris bid relied on or used Concordia-proprietary IP and confidential information. In Part 6 of the proposal, Polaris explicitly stated that it had developed a new production design solving key issues experienced by “the team during the Starsailor project” and highlighted “extensive lessons learned throughout the Starsailor project” as a decisive advantage over other Canadian launch companies. It stated that the core team now at Polaris had derived a competitive edge from these failures, lessons and safety systems, and that Polaris was advancing beyond the flight safety systems demonstrated on Starsailor.
The court read these passages as clear acknowledgements that Polaris was leveraging the technology, testing history and accumulated know-how from Starsailor as the “foundational building blocks” for its current proposal. In combination with the promotional material positioning Polaris as owner of Starsailor-derived technology, and with the timing of the resignation, demand letters and bid submission, the judge concluded that there was strong prima facie evidence of misappropriation and use of Concordia’s intellectual property and confidential information in the Polaris Proposal.

Alleged breaches of exclusivity, conflicts and loyalty

Beyond IP ownership, Concordia argued that the pattern of conduct showed multiple breaches of contractual and legal duties. First, Mr. Khalimonov never provided formal, contractual disclosure of his director/officer/shareholder role in Polaris, despite explicit disclosure provisions and conflict-of-interest language in the contract. He relied instead on open references to Polaris on LinkedIn and social media. The court found public-facing references inadequate to satisfy formal disclosure obligations, especially where the concurrent role carried a serious and obvious potential for conflict in an identical technical field.
Second, his active work for Polaris, including preparing or approving promotional materials that leveraged Starsailor achievements, was incompatible with the employment contract’s exclusivity clause and his duty to devote his professional time to Concordia. Third, the court accepted, on a provisional basis, Concordia’s evidence that he misused his position and privileged access to Concordia’s most sensitive technical information to benefit Polaris. The judge noted allegations that he used his time at Concordia to work for Polaris, leaked information to his business partner at Polaris, and attracted Concordia’s business partners to meet with Polaris, effectively diverting opportunities.
Taken together, these actions were found, on a strong prima facie basis, to breach the employment agreement, the IP and Conflict of Interest policies, and the Civil Code’s duty of loyalty and confidentiality. The court regarded Polaris’s and Mr. Khalimonov’s conduct in December 2025 as deliberately rushed, aiming to secure a position in Launch the North while leaving the core IP dispute unresolved and attempting to create a fait accompli that would constrain Concordia and the court.

The test for provisional injunctive relief and the court’s reasoning

Because some of the orders sought were mandatory (compelling acts such as removal of a bid and return of information), the court applied a stringent standard. Concordia had to demonstrate a strong prima facie case, not just a serious question; show that it would suffer irreparable harm without the injunction; and establish that the balance of inconvenience and urgency favoured intervention ahead of a full trial.
On appearance of right, the judge considered the totality of evidence: the centrality of Mr. Khalimonov’s role in Starsailor; his contractual undertakings respecting IP, confidentiality and conflicts; the IP Policy’s assignment of qualifying inventions to the university; the ambiguous and, in the court’s view, misleading Polaris marketing materials suggesting Polaris owned Starsailor-derived technology; and the explicit references in the Polaris Proposal to lessons, failures and safety systems from Starsailor as the basis for Polaris’s current approach. From this, the court concluded that there was strong prima facie evidence that Polaris was using and benefiting from Concordia’s intellectual property and confidential information, in violation of the contract, policies and article 2088 CCQ.
On irreparable harm, counsel for the defendants argued the court should “let the market decide” by allowing both proposals to proceed, suggesting that the issue could be sorted out later or would become moot if neither bid won. The court rejected this, reasoning that allowing two competing, IP-entangled bids to proceed in the same federal competition would inject unacceptable uncertainty about who actually owned the underlying technology. Far from letting the market decide, this confusion risked the disqualification of both bids by the federal authorities. The court found that this risk, together with the private benefit Polaris could derive from Concordia’s research and the difficulty of quantifying the reputational and strategic damage to Concordia, constituted irreparable harm justifying interim intervention.
On the balance of inconvenience, the defendants stressed that an injunction forcing Polaris to withdraw its bid, on the eve of the deadline, would effectively bar it from participating in Launch the North, an outcome a later judgment could not undo. The judge accepted that this created a serious prejudice, but weighed it against Concordia’s position. Without an injunction, Polaris would continue to benefit from years of university-funded research and development, supported by donors and the work of hundreds of students and faculty, through a proposal arguably rooted in Concordia’s IP. The court also gave weight to the timing: in quick succession came Concordia’s conflict letter, the resignation, Concordia’s demand letter, Polaris’s federal submission filed while documents were still being demanded back, and the urgent application. The judge was left with the impression that Polaris and Mr. Khalimonov had engineered a race against time to secure their place in the competition before the IP dispute could be adjudicated. In those circumstances, the balance of inconvenience was held to favour Concordia.
Urgency was plain from the record: the Launch the North call for proposals closed at noon on 9 January 2026, with the hearing taking place on 7 January and Concordia’s own bid still to be submitted. The court found it urgent to grant provisional relief, particularly requiring retraction of the Polaris Proposal, to prevent the federal selection process from being tainted by disputed IP and to protect Concordia’s asserted rights while the matter proceeds on the merits.

The orders made and overall outcome

The court granted Concordia’s Application and issued a provisional injunction for ten days, renewable. The orders, directed at Polaris, Mr. Khalimonov and those acting under their authority or with knowledge of the order, are broad. They prohibit disseminating false statements suggesting Polaris holds rights in Concordia’s intellectual property, particularly regarding Space Concordia’s rocketry projects. They bar the defendants from using, promoting, or commercializing any products, devices, equipment or services that incorporate, in whole or in part, Concordia’s intellectual property or confidential information, including technology, algorithms, designs, workflows, software and know-how, subject only to information that is genuinely public other than through a breach.
The defendants are ordered to retract and remove the Polaris Proposal submitted under Launch the North by 10:00 a.m. on 9 January 2026 and to provide written proof of retraction by 10:30 a.m. the same day. They must also, within 24 hours, provide Concordia with a detailed list of all Concordia documents and files in their possession or control as of service of Concordia’s December demand letters, specifying the devices on which those materials are stored, return all confidential information in its original form, and swear statements confirming that all such information has been returned and not deleted, destroyed, retained, transferred or altered. The court further orders Mr. Khalimonov specifically to respect his legal obligations of loyalty and confidentiality toward Concordia, authorizes service outside normal hours and days if needed, dispenses Concordia from posting security, and orders provisional execution of the judgment notwithstanding any appeal, reflecting the compressed timeline of the federal call.
In terms of success, Concordia University emerges as the successful party on this provisional application, obtaining all of the key interim protections it sought, including withdrawal of Polaris’s bid and comprehensive non-use, non-disclosure and return-of-information obligations. The judgment awards Concordia “legal costs against the Defendants,” but it does not specify any quantified amount of damages, costs or other monetary relief; the total monetary award in favour of Concordia therefore cannot be determined from this decision alone, as costs will be dealt with according to the applicable rules or tariff and no damages figure is fixed in the text.