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
CIPO
CIPO has announced downtime this weekend: “Due to essential maintenance for government cloud services, all e-commerce applications at the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) will be unavailable on Saturday, August 16, from 12:00 am to 11:59 pm (ET).”
Plant Breeders Rights
Proposed amendments to the Plant Breeders’ Rights Regulations have been published in the Canada Gazette for publication. The proposed amendments would “narrow[] the scope of the farmers’ privilege exemption, extend[] the duration of PBR protection for certain crop kinds, and facilitat[e] access to the PBR framework through amendments that reduce burden and add flexibility.”
Federal Court
The Federal Court has issued an updated New Case and Trial Management Guidelines for Complex Proceedings, Proceedings under the PM(NOC) Regulations, and Appeals under Subsection 56(1) of the Trademarks Act, effective immediately. The updates are specific to appeals of the Registrar of Trademarks under subsection 56(1) of the Trademarks Act and particularly requests for leave to file new evidence and requesting case management.
Federal Court of Appeal
On June 26th, the Federal Court of Appeal released an updated Consolidated Practice Direction with changes directed to proof of service including service by email; and the style of citations/footnotes. The consolidated practice notice was originally released in 2023 and updated last year.
PMPRB
The Patented Medicines Prices Review Board (PMPRB) has published its Administrative Process for Excessive Price Hearing Recommendation (effective January 2026) after years of consultation. From the announcement, “The new Guidelines explain the new two-step process used by PMPRB staff to monitor and review drug prices by comparing the prices in other countries or to other similar treatments in Canada.”
Outage
Unfortunately, there was a significant server outage last week on the system that supports this website and the daily email service. I’m still working on getting things back online. In the meantime, some aspects of the website may not be fully operational. Thanks for your patience! Continue reading Outage
Federal Court
The Federal Court has issued Amended Consolidated General Practice Guidelines. Some changes identified include ending the ability to file by email (except in limited circumstances) [s19]; mandatory bookmarks for PDF files [s19e]; personal service and proof of service [s31, 34, 35]; access to court files [s37-39]; determination of motions in writing [s45-50]; and publication of decisions [s88-90].
TMOB
The Trademark Opposition Board has issued a practice notice requiring a “Declaration of use of AI” when “generative AI is used to create content in a document”. A couple of decisions have identified hallucinated decisions cited in submissions – see 2024 TMOB 150 and 2024 TMOB 211.