On March 8, 2013, the Canadian Patent Office released examination guidelines for computer-related
subject matter to take into account the Federal Court of Appeal
decision in Canada (Attorney General) v Amazon.com Inc, 2011 FCA 328.
The guidelines acknowledge that the Patent Office must assess
whether claimed subject matter falls within the definition of an
"invention" in the Patent Act and is therefore
statutory subject matter based on the essential elements of the
claim as determined by a purposive construction of the claim.
Performing a purposive construction
The guidelines indicate that a purposive construction of a claim
should be performed by considering the specification as a whole and
the common general knowledge in the relevant art. The guidelines
further state that to perform a purposive construction, an examiner
needs to identify the problem the inventors set out to solve and
the proposed solution. In this regard, the guidelines note that
guidance in
