Industry committee  I'll follow up on Mr. Keon's remarks on the linkage system, the patented medicine notice of compliance system. It's not a perfect system from either the generic or the brand perspective, but I will agree that it's a strong system. I must say I'm a bit annoyed that we're on the U.

Industry committee  Yes. I would just repeat that anything that increases the availability of information and increases the ease of searching is good. I'm not sure exactly what the nature of the database we're talking about is, but it's certainly very important to be able to find information on issu

Industry committee  I was hoping somebody would follow up on that. It's rather difficult to define patent trolls. The broad definition of a troll is that it's a non-practising entity, that is, somebody who doesn't actually commercialize and implement the invention, but who instead has licensed it f

Industry committee  We're talking about patent term extension in the pharmaceutical context here so I'm not sure if your remarks before about extension not leading to R and D.... That wouldn't surprise me at all in most other industries where patents don't play as big a role. That could be part of t

Industry committee  Yes. The argument in favour of patent term extension is fairly straightforward. The patent term runs from the time the patent application is filed. There's a certain amount of time, about three years maybe, until the patent is actually granted. In many industries, by that time th

Industry committee  Let me start with the second part of your question regarding whether there are best practices in other countries. Unfortunately, I would say the answer is no. The U.S. recently had very high-profile litigation over the same issue. Their law is just as confused as ours is. We ha

Industry committee  Well, that's a question that I hate to answer because the answer is that I don't know. If you really pressed me, I think I would say probably not. My feeling is they're probably not good for innovation, but it really is a feeling and this is a question that, if you gave me more t

Industry committee  Regarding pharmaceutical patents, there are many aspects of the law that could be changed. We've heard a fair bit already about the details of the notice of compliance system, that is, the patent linkage system. I think patent term extension is a good idea. I acknowledge there is

Industry committee  I have to admit that I don't have a lot of familiarity with the Internet. I'm as central Canada focused as anyone. Part of the issue about not having patent officers outside of central Canada is that it's a very specialized practice. Are there enough in New Brunswick? I know we

Industry committee  As I said in my remarks, it is very clear that industries experience the patent system differently. It has different importance in different industries. In that respect, yes, it would be a good idea in principle to tailor the patent regime and many aspects, potentially from paten

Industry committee  This is a little bit outside my area of expertise, which is focused on the purely legal issues.

Industry committee  Can you hear me all right?

Industry committee  Thank you for inviting me to appear today. The first point I'd like to address in my remarks is the subject of business method patents and patentable subject matter more broadly. Business method patents have been controversial since the 1998 U.S. decision opened the door, or flo