Since 1995, the Federal Court of Canada has refused to hear questions relating solely to patent ownership. In Lawther v. 424470 B.C. Ltd.1 the Federal Court declined jurisdiction, stating that “[t]his Court has no jurisdiction to entertain a dispute which is solely a matter of contract”, thereby (…)
The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) has now made a further announcement concerning the extension of deadlines, to the effect that deadlines falling within March 16 to August 7, 2020, are extended to August 10, 2020. CIPO is otherwise still open for business and our IP team members (…)
New challenges The appearance of COVID-19 disrupted the operations of many companies. Some had to initiate work from home. Others were forced to quickly set up online services. This accelerated transition has made cybersecurity vitally important, particularly considering the personal information (…)
Natural products play an important role in pharmaceutical innovation. They are active components in many medicines. For example, nearly half of the small molecules used to treat cancer are natural products or directly derived from natural products.1 They are also components of vaccines. The (…)
As distribution channels with a global reach, websites are a powerful tool for doing business, and during the pandemic, they even play a critical role. A website consists of a set of webpages accessible from an address hosted on a server through the internet or an intranet. A website is a (…)
The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) has made a further announcement concerning the extension of deadlines, to the effect that deadlines falling within March 16 to April 30, 2020 are extended to May 1, 2020. CIPO is otherwise still open for business and our intellectual property team (…)
Quebec’s Minister of Finance tabled his budget for 2020-2021, titled Your Future, your Budget1, on March 10. Among the new measures introduced by the government, new tax incentives for innovation and the commercialization of Quebec intellectual property were announced. The incentive deduction for (…)
Phishing fraud is a rampant problem that causes major losses throughout the world. It consists in bad actors sending emails in which they falsely claim to be a trusted third party or legitimate company in order to obtain confidential information from the recipient for the purpose of committing (…)
Moving far beyond the traditional models of closed innovation, artificial intelligence is progressing by means of collaborations and exchanges, both with the academic world and between companies. In Canada, the United States and Europe, innovation has evolved in ways that have changed the very (…)
Though it doesn’t happen often, some franchisors start a franchise system with the goal of selling it in the short or medium term. However, the quality of the infrastructure required to build a viable franchise system and the amount of resources (financial or other) that need to be invested over (…)
Nearly twenty years ago, the Supreme Court of Canada1 rejected the theory of estoppel based on a patent’s prosecution history, more commonly known as "file wrapper estoppel"2). At the time, Justice Binnie wrote, “[…]purposive construction, which keeps the focus on the language of the claims, seems (…)
The new Patent Rules, as well as certain amendments to the Patent Act, came into force on October 30, 2019. These changes implement the Patent Law Treaty and reduce the risk to applicants of a loss of rights but also bring about practice changes worthy of mention. Canadian national phase of a PCT (…)
The Court of Appeal of Quebec was once again called upon to rule on a Wellington type application aiming to force an insurer to defend its insureds1. Over the years, the scope of this duty has developed extensively in case law. In this particular case, the Court ordered that defence costs be (…)