Canadian Patent Office Issues Practice Notice Regarding Signal Claims

Originally published in Blakes Bulletin on Intellectual Property, December 2007

With the proliferation of information technology and most notably Internet-based activity, it is becoming increasingly difficult in the field of electromagnetic and acoustic signals (signals) to enforce patent rights, particularly when there are several entities in different jurisdictions performing the patented method or each providing only a piece of a patented system.

This can lead to situations where the only way to enforce a patent in a given jurisdiction is to pursue many individuals, such as consumers, who download patent-infringing software over the Internet. It is therefore desirable to protect the invention embodied in a transient signal or carrier wave since that may be the only tangible form of the invention that exists in a particular jurisdiction.