The hearing of an appeal from the Patent Appeal Board on patentable subject matter in Benjamin Moore & Co. (Re), 2020 CACP 15 has been scheduled for March 30, 2022. IPIC is intervening.
Also, CIPO has announced it will be joining WIPO’s DAS (Digital Access Service) for patent priority documents as of February 1, 2022.
Amendments to the Federal Courts Rules come into force today – see earlier post. The amendments relate to i) limited scope representation; ii) enforcement of orders; and iii) a series of miscellaneous amendments including to Rule 3.
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.
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
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.
CIPO has reminded applicants that as of January 1st, many service fees have decreased by 0.2% due to fee adjustments under the Service Fees Act. As a result, the fees listed in Schedules to the Regulations may no longer be current so online resources should be consulted for the current fees. Continue reading Fee Decrease