In 2014, Canada’s patent law was amended to comply with
Canada’s obligation under the Patent Law Treaty (PLT), but
implementation required amending the Patent Rules. The
Patent Rules have now been finalized, and amendments to
both the Patent Act and Rules will come into
force on October 30, 2019 (CIF).
As mentioned in the previous articles1, this series will cover the most
significant amendments that affect users of the system, and in the
transition to the new regime, will discuss options available to
Applicants.
Correction of errors
As mentioned in our most recent article in this series, the new
Rules bring in an entire new regime for correcting errors
made in an application and in a patent. The mechanism for
correcting “clerical errors” under the current
Patent Act is defined under Section 8. So-called Section 8
requests are not well-defined in the Act and
Rules and therefore the new provisions are intended to
provide more clarity about what can be corrected
