Useful and Non-Obvious News – Fall / 15
By Adam Mizera
Trans-Pacific Partnership : Potential IP Consequences in Canada
On October 5, Canada successfully concluded negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership with the US, Mexico, Japan, Australia, and 7 other member nations (but not China). Although the new multilateral trade agreement has not been made public, a technical summary on provisions relevant to intellectual property issues in Canada has been prepared by the Canadian government and is accessible on the following link. The Canadian parliament will have to eventually ratify the agreement for it to enter into force. A future newsletter article will analyze in detail any important changes in intellectual property practice in Canada that will result from the agreement, once the final version of the text is made publicly available.
A New Online Platform on Renewable Energy Innovation and Patents
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the European Patent Office and the International Electrotechnical Commission have launched a new online platform giving access to a large collection of global renewable energy standards and patent documents. The platform is called INSPIRE (International Standards and Patents in Renewable Energy). The platform contains information on over two million patent documents relating to carbon mitigation technologies from PATSTAT – a patent statistics database and Espacenet – a public online patent search tool. The platform also enables users to search through a database of more than 400 internationally used standards in this field.
The INSPIRE platform can be accessed here.
Fall 2015: Canadian Trademark Office will Begin Accepting Trademark Applications Using the Nice Classification
Starting on September 28, 2015, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) will be accepting trademark applications filed with their goods and services grouped and classed according to the Nice Classification, an international classification standard of goods and services relating to trademarks.
The upcoming changes and details are provided in the coming weeks on CIPO’s trademarks page.
Canadian Patent Office Issues Notice on Examination Practice Respecting Medical Diagnostic Methods
The Canadian Patent Office has recently published a new notice related to the evaluation of the patentability of inventions including medical diagnostic methods. This notice describes guidance relied upon by Canadian Examiners when considering whether or not a claimed invention constitutes patentable subject matter. Details on the practice notice can be found on the following site.