Yes, Mr. Chair.
Good morning.
Thank you very much. I'm Steve Perry, the chair of the design committee for the institute.
As David mentioned, a number of the issues we wished to raise have been presented quite ably by our friends at Bereskin and Parr. Mindful of the valuable time of the committee members, I won't dwell on them.
Suffice it to say, as Scott mentioned, the devil is in the details. Some very important provisions are being moved from the act into the regulations, and it's uncertain how those may end up getting implemented; it's important that there be as much consultation at that phase as possible. Abandonment and reinstatement is one. The issue of possible self-collision, where a designer files a design application for the overall shape of a device and then perhaps a day later, when the new drawings are prepared, files a second application for the keyboard. Under the proposed legislation it is possible that the first application will destroy the novelty of the second application. Similar provision in the Patent Act applies to different applicants, so it's a race to the patent office.
As I said, I will leave it at that. Further details can be found in our submission. We welcome your questions.
Thank you once again for inviting David and me to speak about intellectual property.