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.
All posts by Alan Macek
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).
3,000,000
CIPO announced today that it has allocated patent application number 3,000,000. This is the one-millionth ‘New Act’ patent application.
Certificate of Supplementary Protection
The first Certificate of Supplementary Protection has issued, providing two years of protection. Twelve applications for certificates of supplementary protection have been filed since the regulations came into force in September 2017. Continue reading Certificate of Supplementary Protection
Copyright
Last week, the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology announced the statutory review of the of the Copyright Act.
Skipped
There was no IPPractice email update on Thursday, March 22 due to problems accessing the Federal Court website. The update for Friday contains updates for both Thursday and Friday.
Canadian Trademark Filings in 2017
About 55,000 trademark applications were filed in Canada in 2017. Of these, about 25% were filed in-house or without an agent (up slightly from previous years, and up from 17% in 2010). Check out my list of the 50 firms/agents that filed the most applications in 2017.
Top 5 trademark filers in 2017: Brandster Branding Ltd., Target Brands, The Procter & Gamble Company, Johnson & Johnson, and L’Oreal. Continue reading Canadian Trademark Filings in 2017