For those following Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario’s challenge to the validity of certain gene patents in the Federal Court (T-2249-14 – see earlier post), CHEO has announced a settlement: “the patent holder Transgenomic has agreed to provide CHEO and all other Canadian public sector hospitals and laboratories the right to test Canadians for Long QT syndrome on a not-for-profit basis”.
More Promise?
The Supreme Court of Canada will release its leave to appeal decision on Thursday in AstraZeneca Canada Inc., et al. v. Apotex Inc., et al. (Esomeprazole), which considers, among other things, the promised utility doctrine in Canada. SCC File #36654 on appeal from 2015 FCA 158.
US Agent Privilege
Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a decision in Re: Queen’s University relating to non-attorney patent agent privilege. The Court concluded that such privilege should be recognized.
NAFTA Proceeding
Nine entities have filed amicus curiae applications in Eli Lilly’s NAFTA arbitration proceeding relating to the ‘promise doctrine’. The entities include industry associations, and academics.
SCC grants leave on Google injunction
On Thursday, the Supreme Court of Canada granted leave to appeal in the case of Google Inc. v. Equustek Solutions Inc., et. al, an appeal from a British Columbia Court of Appeal decision, in which a broad worldwide injunction was granted restraining Google, a non-party to the action, from including the defendants’ websites in Google’s search results.
Patents
A couple of items from last week that may be of interest:
- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in an en banc decision, held in Lexmark v. Impression held that when a product is sold with limitations on re-sale or use restrictions, this restriction prevents exhaustion of patent rights with respect to downstream sales in breach of those restrictions.
- CIPPIC and the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy at McGill University have jointly sought amicus curae status in Eli Lilly’s NAFTA arbitration relating to the ‘promise doctrine’. They have published their application and their submissions.
- “Threading the biosimilar needle: Patent lawyers walk a fine line between dosage regimes and medical treatment“, an article by my colleagues, Geoff Mowatt and Nik Purcell, was published in The Lawyers Weekly.
- My article, “Summary Resolution of Intellectual Property Cases“, was published last week in Slaw. It focuses on the 2009 summary trial and summary judgment amendments to the Federal Courts Rules and their application to IP cases.
Summary Judgment and Summary Trial
My recent article on the 2009 amendments to the Federal Courts Rules relating to summary judgment and summary trial, particular for intellectual property proceedings was published by Slaw.
Canadian Trademark Firms in 2015
About 53,000 trademark applications were filed in Canada in 2015. Of these, about 22% were filed in-house or without an agent (about the same as in the last couple of years). Gowlings, Bereskin & Parr and Smart & Biggar were the firms that filed the most trademark applications. Check out my list of the 50 firms/agents that filed the most applications in 2015.
Top Patentees
BlackBerry tops the list once again for receiving the most Canadian patents in the past year, obtaining almost twice as many patents as the second place applicant. The others in the top five for 2015 were Qualcomm, Halliburton Energy Services, General Electric and Schlumberger. Approximately 21,000 Canadian patents were granted last year to approximately 9000 applicants. Continue reading Top Patentees
NAFTA Arbitration
The rejoinder submissions and evidence of the Canadian Government has been posted in Eli Lilly’s NAFTA Chapter 11 arbitration against the Canadian government relating to the utility of Eli Lilly’s Zyprexa and Strattera patents. Continue reading NAFTA Arbitration