2022 FC 923: Benjamin Moore & Co. v. Attorney General of Canada Benjamin Moore & Co. appealed the decisions made by the Commissioner of Patents on CA 2,695,130 & CA 2,695,146 that the claims for these applications do not comprise patentable subject matter, under section 2 of the Patent Act, as the Commissioner determined the essential elements of each invention constituted... Read More
Amendments to the Canadian Patent Rules to Introduce Excess Claim Fees and Request for Continued Examination (RCEs) Coming into Force October 3, 2022 Amendments to the Canadian Patent Rules were registered on June 2, 2022. Amendments relating to sequence listings come into force on July 1, 2022 while all other rule changes come into force on October 3, 2022. These Rule... Read More
COVID 19 Update In view of COVID 19, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office [Patent Office, Trademark Office, & Industrial Design Office] has again extended due dates until July 20th, 2020 for all matters before CIPO that have a deadline to take action for the period beginning March 16, 2020 and currently ending July 17, 2020. However, like CIPO, we are recommending... Read More
CUSMA (NFTA-2) comes into force July 1st 2020! CUSMA, the Canadian, United States and Mexico Agreement (NFTA-2) comes into force tomorrow, July 1st, 2020! Many IP obligations under CUSMA have been ratified through the new Patent Act, Industrial Design Act and Trademarks Act. More changes that will be made through legislative amendments are, for instance: “collective marks” protection Patent term adjustment due to unreasonable delay in the issuance... Read More
COVID 19 Update In view of COVID 19, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office [Patent Office, Trademark Office, & Industrial Design Office] is extending due dates until May 1, 2020 for all matters before CIPO that have a deadline to take action for the period beginning March 16, 2020 and currently ending April 30, 2020. However, like CIPO, we are recommending that... Read More
Canadian Patent Blog: New Patent Rules The new Patent Rules were recently published and the long awaited amendments to the Canadian Patent Act are scheduled to come into force on October 30, 2019. These changes to the Patent Rules and Patent Act will substantially alter Canadian practice. A few of these changes include but are not limited to: For new filings, an English... Read More
A business corporation may not have the resources to hire in-house one or more corporate patent or trademark agents to meet their patent needs, but may still require the cost effective value that an in-house patent/trademark agent brings to a business' strategic plan. In such instances a virtual in-house corporate agent can be contracted to perform this role, or to... Read More
In the United States, a patent application may be filed based on an earlier filed “parent” application. Such applications include divisional applications and continuation applications. Continuation application and divisional applications have the same specification as the parent application but normally have different claims. Continuation-in-part (CIP) applications are also available in the United States. However, CIPs include subject matter not originally... Read More
In the Supreme Court decision of Teva Canada Ltd. v. Pfizer Canada Inc. 2012 SCC 60 – Nov 8, 2012 - (Decision varied by SCC in 2013 from pronouncement that patent is not valid to “Teva has established its allegation that Canadian Patent 2,163,446 is not valid) the validity issue of the Viagra patent turned on the patent bargain not... Read More
Costs play an important role for business when making decisions to file and prosecute patent applications through to the grant of patents. These costs can run into the 10’s of thousands of dollars for protection in one or more countries. But the cost of obtaining protection sometimes pales in comparison to the cost of patent litigation. In the Federal Court of... Read More
