Tag Archives: Rule Changes

Budget Implementation Act

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.

PMPRB

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

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.

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Patented Medicines

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.

Federal Courts Rules

As mentioned last week, amendments to the Federal Courts Rules are being made, and were published in the Canada Gazette today for:

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.

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Gazette Amendments

Several IP related amendments have been published in the Canada Gazette: