The Federal Court has issued an updated consolidated Practice Notice dated June 8, 2022. The practice notice consolidates and replaces earlier notices on such issues as informal requests for interlocutory relief, early requests for a hearing, books of authorities, addressing costs at hearings and the appearance of articling students at hearings. Continue reading Federal Court
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Patent Rules
Amendments to the Patent Rules have been registered and will come into force on July 1st for amendments related to sequence listings, and October 3, 2022 for other amendments to “streamline examination’, including excess claim fees and requests for continued examination. The changes will include a $100 per claim fee for applications with more than 20 claims (see new section 80), and a fee for continued examination after three office actions equal to the original examination fee (see section 85.1). The amendments also add steps such as ‘notices of conditional allowance’. Continue reading Patent Rules
Competition Bureau
The Competition Bureau and Health Canada’s Health Product and Food Branch (HPFB) announced a collaboration focused on affordable medicines. The announcement focused on generic companies obtaining samples of the branded drug required to develop and support the regulatory authorization of their generic medicine.
Intellectual Property Ontario
Ontario has created “Intellectual Property Ontario”, a new agency directed to among other things “increase public access to services and resources in respect of intellectual property in order to advance economic growth and competitiveness in Ontario” by supporting development and protection of IP, partnering with educational institutions and providing recommendations to the government. Continue reading Intellectual Property Ontario
Patent Appeal Board
CIPO has announced it is continuing and expanding its procedure to refer final rejections of patent applications to a single member of the PAB in certain circumstances if the rejection only relates to patentable subject matter (with some exceptions), s27(4) and the Patent Rules. CIPO is working to “increase efficiencies and reduce turnaround times” at the PAB. The 2019-2020 Annual Report identified 71 appeals to the PAB and 41 decisions issued.
Happy New Year
Thank you for another year with IPPractice. In 2021, I’ve sent out 461,000 emails to over 2100 subscribers. I have included reports on 200 IP-related decisions and over 350 new IP-proceedings. Happy New Year! Continue reading Happy New Year
Federal Courts Rules
Amendments to the Federal Courts Rules coming into force in January, have been registered. The amendments include expansion to Rule 3 to focus on ‘outcome’ and proportionality rather than ‘determination’, explicit powers to limit examinations (rule 87.1) and a rule specifically for motions in writing at the Federal Court of Appeal (rule 369.2), among other things.
Patent Infringement Proceedings
For my recent article for Slaw, I tracked all the patent infringement proceedings started over the three year period 2017 to 2019. Of the 140 cases, nine have gone to trial, the fastest in 29 months. Over half of cases are resolved in less than two years, typically by discontinuance/settlement.
Top Patentees 2020
In 2020, approximately 21,300 patents were granted by the Canadian Patent Office, down slightly from 2019. Halliburton Energy Services was again the top recipient of patents. The other top applicants were The Boeing Company, General Electric Company, BASF and Becton, Dickinson and Company. Continue reading Top Patentees 2020
Holiday
The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on September 30th has been incorporated into the Federal Courts Rules definition of “holiday”. The Federal Court issued a notice reminding litigants to take this holiday into account when computing deadlines and that hearings are being rescheduled.