CIPO has an announced a consultation on the determination of additional term if a patent was issued after a threshold date unless, after accounting for days to be subtracted, the net number of relevant days prior to issuance falls below the threshold outlined in the Act. The consultation also considers extension of time for requesting examination, suspension of examination during late payment of maintenance fees and requesting priority and early publication on the same day. The consultation period is open until September 8.
The Federal Court has published for consultation in the Canada Gazette, proposed amendments to the Federal Courts Rules relating to the costs regime. The proposed changes include: i) separate sections for actions, applications, motion and appeals; ii) only three columns (instead of five currently); iii) additional assessable items; and iv) an overall increase of about 25% to costs awarded under the tariff. The changes also include replacing “Prothonotary” with “Associate Judge” in the Rules. Continue reading Costs→
CIPO has announced a consultation on Trademark Opposition Board procedures, including costs awards, confidentiality and case management. Continue reading TMOB→
CIPO has announced that maintenance activities will make several online applications inaccessible for portions of Sunday October 2nd and Monday October 3rd including the General Correspondence application for patents, National Entry Request (NER) Online Solution, Patent Maintenance Fee Electronic Service, Patent E-filing, Industrial Design General Correspondence and Copyright General Correspondence. Patent Rule amendments come into force on October 3rd, including excess claim fees and requests for continued examination, that apply to applications where the request for examination is filed on or after October 3rd.
Proposed Rules of Practice and Procedure for the Copyright Board have been published for consultation. The rules address notices of grounds within 7 days of filing a tariff proposal, joint notices of issues, case management, electronic documents and interveners, and would apply to new and existing proceedings.
Bill C-19, “An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 7, 2022 and other measures” includes
measures directed to the term of copyright in Division 16 including “6. Except as otherwise expressly provided by this Act, the term for which copyright subsists is the life of the author, the remainder of the calendar year in which the author dies, and a period of 70 years following the end of that calendar year”;
changes to the College of Patent Agents and Trademark Agents Act in Division 17; and
replaces the term “prothonotary” with “associate judge” in Division 22.
Health Canada announced this afternoon, “…Health Canada will be moving forward with the implementation of the new basket of comparator countries and reduced reporting requirements for those medicines at lowest risk of excessive pricing. These [Amendments to the Patented Medicines Regulations] will come-into-force on July 1, 2022. The Government will not proceed with the Amendments related to the new price regulatory factors, nor with the requirements to file information net of all price adjustments.” Continue reading PMPRB→
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.
In what is becoming a holiday tradition, the coming into force of amendments to the Patented Medicines Regulations has been again delayed by six months. The amendments were scheduled to come into force on January 1, 2022 having previously been scheduled for July 2021, January 2021, and July 2020 (see earlier post). The amendments generally relate to factors to be considered by the PMPRB for pricing patented medicines.
As mentioned last week, amendments to the Federal Courts Rules are being made, and were published in the Canada Gazette today for:
miscellaneous changes including 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.