Earlier today, the government announced details on three aspects of its IP Strategy (see April 2018 post). This included the Patent Collective pilot program (“$30 million to assist small and medium-sized enterprises in the data-driven clean technology sector with their IP needs”), ExploreIP (tool to “help Canadian entrepreneurs and businesses access valuable publicly owned IP”), and IP Legal Clinics grants (UOttawa, the UWindsor, YorkU and the UdeM will “receive grants to develop or expand their IP legal clinic resources”). Continue reading IP Strategy
Category Archives: Daily Alert
Patent Law Treaty
Yesterday, Canada deposited the instrument of ratification of the Patent Law Treaty. This follows publication of the Patent Rules and the announcement of the coming into force date of October 30, 2019. Continue reading Patent Law Treaty
Website
The IPPractice.ca website is now working again. This week it has been inaccessible due to a network problem which has meant that most of the links in the emails were not working. Sorry for any inconvenience. Please let me know if you notice anything still not working.
Patent Amendments
The new Patent Rules, coming into force on October 30, 2019, have been published in the Canada Gazette Part II. The modernization of the Patent Act and Rules allows Canada to ratify the Patent Law Treaty. Key changes relate to filing requirements, priority claims, agent representation and register, examination and amendments, corrections, abandonments/reinstatements, transfers, due care/third party rights, and divisionals. Continue reading Patent Amendments
Patent Amendments
The amendments to the Patent Act and Patent Rules will come into force October 30, 2019. Orders in Council will be published in July with the amended Patent Rules and authorization to ratify the Patent Law Treaty.
Appointments
Janet Fuhrer of Ridout & Maybee was appointed a judge of the Federal Court. Judicial appointments were also made today in Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba.
Appointments
Justice Anne Mactavish, a Judge of the Federal Court was appointed yesterday to the Federal Court of Appeal. Appointments were also made in Ontario, British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Quebec.
Trademark Changes
On Monday, June 17, 2019, significant changes to the Trademarks Act will come into force. These long awaited changes including changes to implement the Madrid Protocol, the Singapore Treaty and the Nice Agreement. Many of CIPO’s online trademark services are offline until Monday morning in preparation for the changes. Continue reading Trademark Changes
CIPO downtime
In support of the upcoming changes to the Trademark Act, CIPO is taking some online services offline for patents, copyright, industrial designs from Thursday, June 13, 2019, at 4 p.m. EDT to Friday, June 14, 2019, at 7 a.m. EDT. Trademark online services will be offline from Thursday, at 00:00 EDT to Monday, at 06:00am EDT. Continue reading CIPO downtime
Copyright Review
The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology has issued its report (link) on the 5-year statutory review of the Copyright Act. The committee includes 36 recommendations touching on simplifying the structure of the Copyright Act, reversion of copyright, crown copyright, computer generated works, fair dealing, safe harbours and statutory damages, among other things.
Update: Link to report fixed after they moved it.