Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill C-29, an act to amend the Patent Act.
This is a housekeeping bill, in our view, which addresses two separate patent related issues. The first issue it addresses deals with the Jean Chrétien pledge to Africa act, which does help to facilitate the flow of drugs to deal with HIV-AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis to least developed nations.
The bill called for the creation of a committee of experts to advise the government on what pharmaceutical products should be eligible for export under the licensing regime set up by the act. The first part of Bill C-29 amends the act to allow the Senate, not just the House of Commons, to assess and recommend potential candidates for the committee of experts.
We support this specific aspect of the bill, although we would ask for guidance from the Senate as to which committee or committees should actually deal with this issue.
The second part of the bill deals with patent fees and entity size. Fees are required at all stages of a patent's life: application, review and maintenance. Canada and the United States have separate fee structures, depending on whether a business applying for a patent is a small entity or a large entity. The separation based on size is quite common.
Until recently, a company that filed for a patent under the small business fees structure and then became a large business, or vice versa, was granted flexibility in its patent fees. The company could pay a top-up or could reduce its fees due if the enterprise size changed. The top-up scheme has caused considerable administrative trouble for patent agents and it is my understanding that they would like this matter remedied as quickly as possible.
A court case has clarified that there should never have been such a top-up scheme. The courts ruled that the entity's status is determined when a patent regime is first engaged. Thus if the company files as a small business at day one, it is considered a small business for the life of the 20 year patent.
This set of amendments is required to prevent possible lawsuits for an estimated 7,000 patent holders and patent applicants on the grounds that their fees have not fully been paid and thus their patents could be declared invalid. This was the Dutch industry's case.
We support these amendments as well in a sense that they will certainly reduce a lot of the legislation or the litigiousness that could result from this. We think that the size of the company when it gets a patent should determine its size for the life of the patent.
In conclusion, we also support the amendments to the interpretation of schedules because we would like Canada to have a clear intellectual property framework.
We look forward to dealing with the bill at committee. We hope the legislation will pass as quickly as possible.