All posts by Alan Macek

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.

Continue reading Happy World IP Day

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.

Continue reading IPRs

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