Industry Canada has indicated that changes will be made to the Patented Medicine (Notice of Compliance) Regulations relating to the listing of patents on the Patent Register claiming single medicinal ingredients found in combination drugs.
Third Round
On Friday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held in Ultramercial, Inc. v. Hulu LLC that the claims to a method of distributing copyrighted media over the Internet were directed to unpatentable subject matter . The U.S. Supreme Court had previously remanded the proceeding back to the CAFC after Myriad and again after Alice when, in both previous cases, the court had found the claims patentable. Continue reading Third Round
Gene Patents
As indicated below, Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) has started litigation against the University of Utah Research Foundation, Genzyme Genetics and Yale University. The litigation seeks a declaration of non-infringement and invalidity of certain patents relating to Long QT Syndrome genes, including on the basis of non-patentable subject matter. Continue reading Gene Patents
SCC
Tomorrow, the Supreme Court of Canada was scheduled to hear arguments in Apotex Inc., et al. v. Sanofi-Aventis, et al. (Plavix/clopidogrel), including on the issue of patent utility/promise but this afternoon the Court announced that the hearing will NOT go ahead. Apotex has discontinued its appeal. Continue reading SCC
Ontario Court Practice Changes
The Ontario Superior Court has published a practice advisory relating to motions practice in Toronto. Motion Scheduling Court will be rebranded as Civil Practice Court with additional case management as part of an initiative to address “motions culture” in Toronto. Changes come into effect on November 10, 2014.
Patent and Design Changes
As part of the government’s latest budget bill, C-43, proposed changes to the Patent Act and the Industrial Design Act have been introduced. The changes are intended to implement the Patent Law Treaty and the Geneva (1999) Act of the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs. Continue reading Patent and Design Changes
Some IP-related items
- Eli Lilly’s memorandum in the NAFTA arbitration on the ‘promise’ doctrine has been posted.
- Justice Marc Noël was appointed Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Appeal replacing the Honourable Pierre Blais, who retired earlier this year.
- CIPO has announced a consultation on Modernization the IP Community, a report on the regulatory framework for trademark and patent agents prepared with IPIC, AIPPI and FICPI, of which I had a small part on one of the working groups.
- I am attending the AIPLA Annual Meeting this week. Let me know if you are planning on being there as well.
Political Copyright
There are reports of plans to amend the Copyright Act to provide an exception for political advertising. The exception would permit free use of news content by political actors without requiring rights holder authorization.
Industrial Design Regulations
A minor amendment has been made to the Industrial Design Regulations repealing section 12(3). The Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations advised that an inconsistency between the English and French versions of the Industrial Design Act meant the section may be invalid.
Search Tools
For searching the Canadian Patents Database, I’ve prepared a Chrome/Firefox extension that permits searching by number with commas (ie “2,345,678”) in both the basic and number search fields – see tools.