Summary: Another look at Canadian patent law (especially regarding software patents) and how it is affected by the neighbours down south

Patent law allows one company to have monopoly power over the action of other companies. One country's national patent law allows this country to have leverage/power over another (e.g. the United States enforcing US-style laws in China). It's not about innovation, it's about protection by offensive action. There are ways of obscuring these truisms using all sorts of euphemisms and propaganda that's repeated endlessly until it permeates all of human kind. The spin does not make these outdated claims any truer.

Metzler has just made this remark on Canada:

New guidance re computer-implemented inventions in Canada http://t.co/kgZwlh4

Here is the post in question. It says: "Interestingly, during the consultation, the US Supreme Court handed down the landmark Bilski opinion (holding that the machine-or-transformation test is not the only test for patent eligible subject matter) but this did not seem to find its way into the Canadian chapter.

"The Office had been urged by some stakeholders to wait for Justice Phelan’s forthcoming decision in the Amazon 1-click appeal. This decision has been under reserve since the hearing on April 20, 2010. Should the Court re-write the legal foundation for the guidance, the Office’s new guidance on computer inventions may become obsolete very soon."

While this may be true, recently we saw that US-style patent law enters Canada [1, 2, 3, 4] just as US-style copyright law aggressively forces its way into Canada, despite great resistance from the Canadian public. A lot of the patent side of it reached public awareness after Amazon had done its latest bad deed [1, 2, 3]. This helped expose the uncertainty and the associated threat.

According to the president of the FFII:

Canadian PO says computer is undefined: "The definition of "computer" is so broad and vague that it has little meaning" http://ur1.ca/2a8xd

Amazon in Canada is one of the major test cases at the moment and the swpat.org wiki has a new page about it. If any of our Canadian readers could add information, that would be lovely. Techrights was recently approached by Canadian television (CTV) for more information on the subject as information that is posted here gets taken seriously by the mainstream. This helps us shatter myths and bring about positive changes. ⬆