Trends, analysis and insights in IP Law
Mariah Carey wrote and recorded one of the world’s most well known Christmas songs, ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU. Originally released in 1994, it has become a staple of holiday music playlists; the song has reported earned over $60 million in royalties. In view of this, Mariah Carey could arguably call herself the QUEEN OF CHRISTMAS, right?
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UPDATE: Further to the below article, the Patent Rules have now been published in Canada Gazette, Part II, Volume 156, Number 13. This issue of the Canada Gazette may be accessed here in HTML format, or here in PDF format.
As covered in the blog previously, Canada’s patent regime has been undergoing significant changes. Our earlier posts about these changes and what steps patentees can take to mitigate the impacts of these changes can be found here and here. The amendments are meant to reduce prosecution time and streamline the examination process.
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As part of the implementation of the patent term adjustment (PTA) obligation in the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (“CUSMA”), the Government of Canada proposed a series of amendments to the Canadian Patent Rules to better streamline the patent examination process.
As noted in our earlier blog post, the proposed amendments provided for a request for continued examination requirement and a new notice from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (“CIPO”) to applicants named a “conditional notice of allowance”, both of which are designed to streamline the patent examination process.
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As reported in an earlier ANGLE post, we discussed how 2021 saw a number of patent office developments with regard to whether a non-human entity could be considered an inventor under various patent regimes. Prior to 2021, several patent offices had considered this issue and found that A.I. could not be considered an inventor. In 2021, however, an Australian Court found that a non-human “inventor” is not inconsistent with inventorship under Australian law and South Africa issued a patent designating an A.I. system as the inventor.
It would appear at the end of 2021 that some patent offices were trending towards recognizing a non-human entity, like A.I. based technology, as an inventor. Could this trend continue?
Maybe not. With a decision just before Christmas of 2021 from European authorities, any such trend may have been stopped in its tracks.
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This article is part of a three-part series on NFTs:
In the first and second parts of our series on NFTs,[1] we discussed where NFTs derive their value and what this new breed of digital tokenization means for IP-rights creators, holders, and users.
In this third and final instalment, we look at the history of NFTs from an artistic perspective and what their emergence means for the world of digital art.
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