The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that promises made in a patent are not the standard against which the utility of a patent is measured. This is a departure from previous decisions and a positive development for those seeking patent protection of pharmaceutical and other inventions in Canada.
Read MoreA brief overview regarding the refund of official fees for patents and patent applications, as laid out in Section 4 of the “Patent Rules.”
Read MoreProduct-by-process claims are certainly permitted in Canada, and in fact threshold requirements for novelty and utility can be quite low. That being said, product-by-process claims may be more difficult to enforce and consideration of whether such a claim is appropriate should be made on a case-by-case basis.
Read MoreMany U.S. practitioners will tell you that providing prior art (i.e. publically available information) before issuance of a patent application is quite an onerous requirement. Understandably, a common question we encounter in Canada from clients is whether Canada has a similar legal requirement?
Read MoreCanadian Patent Rules state requirements on how to proceed when the inventor is not the applicant through legal representative declarations. However, the provisions of the Patent Act with respect to assignments do not appear to be entirely consistent with the provisions of the revised Patent Rules.
Read More