Amendments to the Trade-mark Act and Patent Act, Patent Rules and Trademark Regulations are being made as of November 5, 2018 to amend the procedures on CIPO holidays and force majeure events, and as of June 2018 to patent reinstatements .
All posts by Alan Macek
Industrial Designs
The amended Industrial Design Act and Regulations will come into force November 5, 2018 to implement the Hague Agreement. These changes were first introduced in 2014 as part of budget legislation.
Lots of Patents
USPTO granted patent No. 10,000,000 entitled, “Coherent LADAR using intra-pixel quadrature detection” to Raytheon today. CIPO allocated patent application 3,000,000 in April of this year.
Decisions
The Federal Court issued a Notice to the Profession (link) regarding the publication of court decisions. The notice replaces the notice of June 2015 which had said that non-precedential decisions would not be published on the Federal Court website. The new notice, which came into force June 1, says that final decisions, if contested, along with interlocutory decisions considered by the Court to have precedential value, will be published on the website, and additional decisions published to CanLII. If you know of an interesting IP decision, please let me know!
Industrial Designs
As part of implementation of the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs, CIPO has published a proposed amended Industrial Design Office Practice Manual (IDOP) for consultation. The Practice Notice indicates that the consultation is open until June 29th with a view to the regulations coming into force date in late 2018.
INTA
I’m looking forward to catching up with friends and colleagues at INTA. Let me know if you are also going to be in Seattle.
Appointments
Alexandra Steele, a lawyer at ROBIC LLP practicing intellectual property law, has been appointed as a Prothonotary of the Federal Court, replacing Prothonotary Richard Morneau who has elected to retire May 15. Appointments were also made today to the courts in Alberta and British Columbia. Continue reading Appointments
Happy World IP Day
A number of interesting announcements on World IP Day. The focus of the international focus on IP was on Powering change: Women in innovation and creativity. In Canada, the government announced a National IP Strategy having a number of components including $85.3 million over five years to help Canadian businesses, creators, entrepreneurs and innovators understand, protect and access IP. Announced for IP tools, was more efficient dispute resolution and tariff setting at the Federal Court (more judges) and Copyright Board through more funding, formation of a patent collective, improvements to IP used in standards-setting processes, and an IP-specific marketplace. Announced legislative changes include:
- establishing minimum requirements for patent demand letters;
- excluding settlement demands from the copyright Notice and Notice regime;
- Requiring ‘use’ of a trademark to enforce it within the first three years;
- affirming the patent research exemption;
- clarifying the role of standard essential patents;
- allowing continued use of IP by licensees in liquidation proceedings; and
- creating a College of Patent and Trademark Agents to regulate agents.
In Europe, the UK announced today that it had ratified the Unified Patent Court (UPC) Agreement.
IPRs
The United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group, LLC (link), where a majority found that the USPTO’s inter partes reviews (IPRs) were constitutional. In the proceeding, the petitioner had argued that actions to revoke a patent must be tried in an Article III court before a jury, rather than through an administrative procedure.
Breach Notifications
Implementing regulations for mandatory data breach reporting requirements, the Breach of Security Safeguards Regulations, were published in the Canada Gazette and are to come into force November 1, 2018. The regulations implement amendments to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).