The webcast from the October 9th Supreme Court of Canada hearing in Pharmascience Inc. v. Janssen Inc. on patentability of methods of medical treatment is now available online.
All posts by Alan Macek
CIPO
The Patent Office has announced a maintenance outage of the MyCIPO Patents portal both this weekend (4pm ET Friday to 10pm ET Sunday) and next weekend (8pm ET Friday to 4pm ET Sunday).
Budget
The government released its Budget 2025 today. Some intellectual property related items include: immediate expensing of productivity-enhancing assets including patents; extensions to the Elevate IP program, the Innovation Asset Collective’s Patent Collective and the IP Assist Program; modernization the Patented Medicines Prices Review Board; and amendments to the Copyright Act to create an Artist’s Resale Right.
Federal Court
Chief Justice Paul Crampton is retiring this week from the Federal Court after 16 years with the Federal Court and 14 years as Chief Justice. Associate Chief Justice Martine St-Louis will serve as Acting Chief Justice of the Federal Court effective October 31, 2025. Continue reading Federal Court
Proceeedings
The Federal Court has opened a large number of ‘reserved’ matters which are listed below, along with a few actual proceedings. These are usually populated earlier in the year rather than at the end of October.
Proceeedings
Several matters started earlier this year were missed from the email alerts, including several IP proceedings. These missed IP proceeding are included below. Continue reading Proceeedings
Patentable Subject Matter
The Supreme Court of Canada is hearing arguments in Pharmascience Inc. v. Janssen Inc. tomorrow, October 9th on the patentability of methods of medical treatment. The Supreme Court indicates that hearing will not be broadcast live but copies of the factums for the parties and interveners are available.
IPIC Annual
I’ll be attending the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada (IPIC) annual conference later this week and presenting on some of the top patent cases over the last year on a panel with Mat Brechtel, Amélie Béliveau and moderator Tamara Ramsey. Let me know if you will be at the conference.
National Day for Truth and Reconciliation
The Federal Courts and the Canadian Intellectual Property Offices will be closed on Tuesday September 30th for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to honour the children who never returned home and survivors of residential schools. Continue reading National Day for Truth and Reconciliation
CIPO
Most of CIPO’s online applications for patents, trademarks, copyright and industrial designs will be offline this week: “Due to scheduled maintenance, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) e-commerce applications [] will be unavailable from Friday, at 8 pm until Sunday, at 10 pm (ET).” Continue reading CIPO