Twitter is being lauded for its “revolutionary” Innovator’s Patent Agreement (IPA), on the basis that it purports to “put ownership of patents back in the hands of the inventors”.  But what does it actually do? Twitter posted the IPA recently here and invited comments.  Quick commentary in the Twittersphere (suitably) was wholly favourable and lauded […]

It used to be common practice to include an “object clause” in a patent specification to clearly set out an over-arching objective of the invention.  Many granted patents have multiple object clauses, setting out a number of goals for the invention.  This practice died away as patent drafters came to realize that courts may interpret […]

Newman, J. and Gajarsa, J. engage in open warfare in their respective reasons in Bard Peripheral Vascular v. W.L. Gore & Associates. The judgment is a Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision in a long-running dispute regarding US patent no. 6,436,135 (first filed in 1974!), which relates to prosthetic vascular grafts fabricated from […]

The judgment of Martineau J. in Eurocopter v. Bell Helicopter Textron Canada Limitée, 2012 FC 113, was released recently.  It represents a win for Eurocopter in that Bell was found to infringe claim 15 of Canadian Patent no. 2,207,787 (the ‘787 Patent).  Much will be made of the fact Martineau J. awarded punitive damages; however, […]

A trio of recent Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) cases, including last week’s decision in DealerTrack v. Huber, give some insight into what the Court considers a patentable process versus an unpatentable “abstract idea” in the United States.  Unfortunately, the line between the two is fuzzy at best. When the United States […]

In 2008 the Supreme Court of Canada handed down one of the most significant patent law judgments of the past decade in Apotex v. Sanofi, 2008 SCC 61. That judgment set the modern tests for evaluating novelty and obviousness in Canadian patent law. The SCC case arose under the Notice of Compliance procedure of the […]

It has been a long time coming, but our new website is now up and running. If you are reading this then you have also discovered that we have incorporated a blog into the website.  Through the blog, we will bring you news of recent judgments, legislative changes, or other happenings in the world of […]