Competition Bureau Releases Draft Updated Intellectual Property Enforcement Guidelines

On April 2, 2014, the Competition Bureau (Bureau) released draft updated Intellectual Property Enforcement Guidelines (Revised IPEGs) for a 60-day consultation period. The Revised IPEGs principally reflect the amendments to the Competition Act (Act) that have been made since the IPEGs were released in 2000 (2000 IPEGs). With one exception, the Revised IPEGs maintain the same conceptual approach as the 2000 IPEGs regarding the interface between competition policy and intellectual property (IP) rights. However, the Revised IPEGs do not deal with some of the more recent challenges – most notably the application of competition law to pharmaceutical patent settlements, which have received extensive attention from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in recent years and were the subject of a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013.¹ In this regard, the Bureau appears not to have closed the door on its willingness to elaborate on these thorny issues and, in fact, has