Practice Committee Meeting PB/IPIC - Tuesday, October 17th, 2017

1:00-3:00PM
50 Victoria Street, Gatineau, Québec, Phase I
24th floor, Room G

Attendees

Co-chairs: Agnès Lajoie and Jenna Wilson

Members: Anne-Josée Delcorde, Janice Kelland, Miriam Paton, John Pivnicki, Peter Wong (via teleconference), David Boudreau, Serge Meunier and Josée Pharand

Guest: Lynne Jorge

Secretary: Sandra Hurley

Items

1. Introduction

A. Lajoie and J. Wilson welcomed attendees to the meeting of the Patent Practice Committee (2PC).

2. Update on PB projects

  1. Legislative Update

    A. Lajoie provided an update of PB legislative projects.

    • CIPO wants to thank IPIC for their detailed submissions in response to the Consultation on the Proposed Patent Rules. The significant effort and care that went into the submission is appreciated. All comments are being carefully considered.
    • In terms of the feedback received from the public consultation, 7 submissions from various types of stakeholders were received. The most substantial submission was of course from IPIC. Two of the other submissions also expressed support for the comments provided by IPIC. All of the submissions are available on the public consultations website.
    • The Office is in the process of drafting the transitional provisions and expects a first draft will be completed this fall. The intent is to engage IPIC and other stakeholders on this part of the Rules as soon as possible.

      Several Rules packages need to be drafted, as considerations have to be made for applications filed in four time periods and patents granted based on applications in 2 time periods:

      • Applications filed pre-1989;
      • Applications filed 1989-1996;
      • Applications filed 1996-before CIF; and
      • Applications filed after CIF.
    • There are a few remaining tasks that need to be completed before a blue-stamped draft of the regulations can be obtained. Over the next few months , the following will take place:
      • Completion of the drafting of transitional provisions;
      • Incorporation of amendments resulting from public consultation feedback;
      • Preparation of the Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement (RIAS); and
      • Review by Editors and Jurilinguists
    • In 2018, a primary focus will be on implementation and having the necessary resources in place with regards to IT, updates to MOPOP, practice guidance, and workshops. The Office's plan is to have much of this prepared well in advance of the coming into force date.
    • The Patent Branch (PB) has prepared an implementation plan to ensure a smooth transition to the amended Patent Act and Rules. The aim of the implementation plan is to establish clear processes and decisional criteria to ensure that the Patent Act and Rules are administered correctly and consistently so that the highest level of service to clients can be provided.
    • As the regulatory text is being developed, the implementation plan is continually being refined to ensure that it is current. All administrative policies, Office practices, processes and external guidance materials are being reviewed diligently to ensure a proactive approach to implementation.
    • There will be an opportunity for IPIC to provide comments and/or suggestions on some administrative practices and/or policies going forward. The Office notes that IPIC has particular interest in determinations of due care and unintentional.
    • A significant effort is being made to upgrade internal technical infrastructure to account for all of the changes in the Patent Act and Rules. While decisions regarding web based services have not been finalized, the plan does provide a greater capacity towards a client-centred approach to the delivery of services online.
    • J. Wilson asked if there may be any changes with respect to such items as restoring Rule 3.1, pertaining to attempts to pay a fee, changing where due care is actually applied and changing the 3-year date by which a Request for Examination will need to be made. A. Lajoie responded that the Office is reviewing IPIC submission and is considering the proposal to increase the date by which a Request for Examination must be made to 4 years. The Office is unlikely to change its position on restoration of Rule 3.1, as it considers that there are sufficient safety nets in place in this regard, such as the practice of General Authorization Statements, increased communications and increased notices. With respect to General Authorization Statements (GAS), J. Wilson indicated that it would be helpful for online submissions if there was a check box to signify that the submitter would like to make a GAS. This was noted by L. Jorge.
  2. MOPOP Update

    J. Pharand provided an update on the MOPOP and associated consultations.

    • In November, CIPO plans to publish a revised MOPOP comprising: revised Chapter 12 that takes into account the Astra-Zeneca Supreme Court decision removing the promise doctrine; the Kits section of Chapter 17, in which most comments received by IPIC were incorporated; the Diagnostic Methods section of Chapter 17 mirroring the related Patent Notice; and various other smaller updates.
    • The Office is also in the process of obtaining approval to purchase a new tool to host the MOPOP and the TM and CID manuals. It is hoped that the new tool will be in place by fall 2018, barring any changes to existing IT priorities. The tool will roll out using the current chapter-based MOPOP. Once PLT is implemented, a topic-based format will be used. Agents whose contact information was provided by John Pivnicki will be surveyed in this regard once the Office has an idea of how the new topic-based structure will look in the new tool.

3. PB Topics

  1. Amended International Applications entering National Phase in Canada
    • IPIC had requested clarification as to CIPO's practice with regard to identifying all parts of an application for examination. Of note, under Article 34 of the PCT, amendments may be made to the description, drawings and/or claims and under Rule 26 of the PCT, pages of the PCT application may be replaced for various reasons (e.g. rectification of obvious errors).
    • D. Boudreau circulated a document to members of the 2PC detailing specific work instructions and process maps for examining a new application. Steps 12 and 13 of the process require the examiner to verify PatentScope for relevant internationally filed Article 19 and Article 34 amendments and that the recent application tabs contain the correct version for examination. Using a "PERM"-macro, the examiner identifies in the opening paragraph of their Examiner Report which claim set has been examined by indicating the date and whether the amendment was made in the national or international phase. There is a check box for pages amended for correction before the RO under PCT Rule 26.
    • For amendments made in the international phase, the Office is considering modifying the PERM to indicate in the examiner report under which Article or Rule the amendments have been made. Also, to help the Office better understand the issue, it is suggested that IPIC members provide examples of situations in which the wrong set of claims was examined.
    • Examination Section Heads will be reminded of Steps 12 and 13 of the relevant process mappings so that they may remind their examination teams of the same.
    • M. Paton indicated that problems can arise in cases where some International Preliminary Examination Authorities (IPEAs) neglect to annex Article 34 amendments to the Chapter II IPRP. A. Lajoie noted that the Office participates in PCT working groups and Meetings of International Authorities. If there are suggestions on ways to improve the system globally, those groups and meetings would be appropriate forums for such suggestions. The representative for CIPO who attends these meetings is Elaine Hellyer : elaine.hellyer@canada.ca
  2. Demo Patent Filing
    • L. Jorge gave a presentation titled "Design Consultation: New Patent E-filing for PCT National Entry Requests (NERs)". Following the 2PC meeting, the slides for the presentation are to be shared with IPIC members of the 2PC.
    • CIPO plans to deliver Release 1 of the product in the summer of 2018.
    • The product will provide a new client interface for filing PCT NER applications, will have communication with WIPO systems, generate a Patent Number at time of filing and integrate with Patent Branch back office systems.
    • The goals of the project include: i) consolidating the user experience for e-filing of PCT NER applications and Canadian nationally filed applications; ii) increasing client confidence in the integrity of e-filing; iii) decreasing the amount of paper filing at the Office; iv) reducing the incidence of lost and misfiled documents; v) reducing the space and consumables used to print and scan e-filings; and vi) increasing data integrity through reduced manual steps to enter data and documents to back-office system.
    • Ms. Jorge then presented a mockup of what the system would look like. Comments and suggestions provided by IPIC members at the 2PC meeting were noted and appreciated.
    • IPIC members are asked to submit any further feedback on the project and new design to lynne.jorge@canada.ca
  3. Classification and related tasks: impacts and corrective actions
    • S. Meunier discussed this issue pertaining to the discovery, following multiple reports from the Client Service Centre of applications not being available on the CPD, that the LOB system needed a first IPC class to be assigned to an application in order for the application to be laid-open and available on the CPD. Receipt of filing certificate could also be delayed due to missing classification on applications.
    • In the past several months, classification tasks have been accumulating to the point of creating a significant backlog. This was caused by various factors that included a problem at WIPO with the IPC on EP PCT applications (problem in XML file with CIPO's system) and a large number of IPCs which expired on January 1st of this year.
    • Steps have been taken for the past several months to mitigate this situation. First IPCs on EP PCT Canadian applications have been manually acquired directly from the Esp@cenet website and entered on EP PCT Canadian applications in LOB by analysts instead of classifiers who had to identify those first IPCs.
    • In addition, a classification prioritization workload Program/Dynamic Report has been developed, so as to ensure classifiers always work on the most important tasks first. This has been in place for about a month, and since then, no requests have been received from the CSC for issues related to applications not being available on the CPD.
    • In order to further reduce this classification backlog, it was decided by the management table to start accepting the first IPC coming from US PCT applications instead of re-classifying them at national entry. The rationale behind this decision comes from the fact that the US has been classifying using the CPC for some years now, and the quality of IPC classification has improved since IPC and CPC classifications are similar. Examiners will still review the IPCs on their applications.

4. IPIC Topics

  1. Task level assigned by CIPO to contestation letters
    • IPIC had requested clarification as to CIPO's procedure for the assignment of Task Levels and whether letters contesting a Notice of Abandonment issued by CIPO might have their level increased to obtain the highest or at least a higher level.
    • D. Boudreau responded that depending on the inventories of each task, the Task Levels can be adjusted as necessary. For example, if a specific task needs to be completed within an established service standard, the Office can adjust its priority accordingly. The Office has no intentions of raising the Task Level related to affidavits, since they are currently completed in a reasonable time frame (i.e. usually less than 5 days). There is no backlog of tasks in Patent Operations.
  2. Section 8 corrections and fees
    • IPIC noted that CIPO had previously informally advised IPIC members that submissions for requests for corrections to issued patents under Section 8 of the Patent Act should be filed without providing a fee when the error arose at CIPO.

      In view of Schedule II, Part IV, Item 19 of the Patent Rules, which stipulates a fee for Section 8 submissions, IPIC wondered whether CIPO might issue a formal written statement stating:

      1. that no fee is required at filing, and
      2. that a standard statement in the submission that the Commissioner is authorized to charge the amount of the insufficiency to the deposit account might be sufficient to meet any required fee if the error is determined to not to have been caused by CIPO.

      IPIC further asked CIPO to confirm whether they : (a) immediately withdraw the fee from the deposit account when no fee was specifically provided, or (b) first determine whether the error was at their end and, if not, then withdraw the fee from the deposit account.

    • J. Pharand responded that the Office takes a flexible approach when evaluating Section 8 requests when it appears that the error arose at CIPO. Requests that indicate that the error arose at CIPO will be evaluated without requiring payment of the fee set out in Schedule II, Item 19. If the fee is not provided, and the error is found to originate from CIPO, the fee is not withdrawn from the account.
    • In a situation where, after evaluation, the correction is found not to be an office error, if the client has met all of the requirements to correct a clerical error and a general authorization statement is present, the office will debit the section 8 fee from the account and process the correction. However, if a general authorization statement is not present in this scenario, the Office will inform the client that the request has been refused for failure to pay the applicable fee.
    • The Office does not believe a formal written statement is needed. It is noted, however, that the entire issue of errors, whether they have been generated by the applicant or the Office, will be revised under the new Rules. Formal communications on those changes will be provided in due time.
  3. Scanning of Documents at CIPO
    • IPIC noted that where responses to Office Actions contain non-patent references or an Information Disclosure Statement (IDS) provided during the prosecution of a corresponding US application, the responses will be scanned into CDAS, but any IDS and such references will not be scanned. IPIC requested the reasoning behind this policy.
    • A. Lajoie confirmed that while all documents received by the Office, including prior art, are in fact scanned, not all documents are laid-open on the CPD (e.g. documents containing personal information and non-patent documents where there would be copyright issues). However, all the information is available in the Office's search room.
    • A. Lajoie indicated that the Office will investigate with regard to making prior art reference lists, such as the U.S. IDS, available on CDAS. The Office will consider asking the Incoming Correspondence Unit to keep lists of citations with the prosecution documents rather than scanning these lists with the documents per se.
  4. "Public Domain" status in the Canadian Patent Database
    • J. Wilson brought forward this item pertaining to the ability of the public to search the CPD for patents and applications having a status of "Public Domain". This status apparently applies to expired patents and to patent applications marked administratively "dead" and "withdrawn". It was suggested that the Office consider limiting a search to patents that are marked expired only, or marked dead, but such a search should be accompanied by a clear warning to the user that they cannot rely on this status as assurance that the subject matter is free to be practised without obtaining legal advice.
    • In response to this item, D. Boudreau distributed a draft listing of which statuses would be made available on the CPD, and how the statuses will be displayed to clients.
    • Patent IT is in the process of delivering changes to the status indicators and search filters on the CPD. The issue of "Public Domain" status will be taken into consideration and the filter for Public Domain would either be removed, or more context of what is included in a search of Public Domain would be provided. The Office welcomes IPIC's feedback on this decision.
    • The proposed labels in the table distributed by D. Boudreau were developed before receiving IPIC feedback regarding the use of the term "Public Domain". The Office would like to offer clients the opportunity to review and provide feedback regarding this proposal before proceeding with IT development. Feedback can be sent directly to David Boudreau at David.Boudreau@canada.ca or ic.cipopbit.ic@canada.ca
    • The Office is also looking into adding suspended statuses to the list. Those statuses could include: Abandoned, About to Lapse, and In Grace Period. There would be more IT work required in order to export these to CPD, but the Office is negotiating with their development team to determine if these can be delivered in the same enhancement Release as the regular statuses shown in the table.
  5. Examiner Interviews
    • IPIC noted that, upon conducting an interview with a Canadian Examiner, the examiner will generate an Interview Record. IPIC felt it would better serve the Applicant to have the correspondence sent out, rather than require the Applicant to proactively monitor the CPD, particularly when the applicant is not in agreement with the Examiner interview summary.
    • A. Lajoie responded that the Interview Record is not a CIPO-generated correspondence that is intended to be mailed to the authorized correspondent. Rather, it is a notation that is put on the file for completeness. This notation is available to the authorized correspondent on the Canadian Patent Database (CPD) should they wish to view it. The authorized correspondent knows that such a record will be on the CPD within a few days as they will have spoken to the examiner on the phone, so not all files will require indefinite monitoring of the database.
    • During the pilot of the Patent Examiner Interview Service:
      • Only 42% of agents requested a copy of the Interview Record (the other 58% declined a copy), and a number of those who requested the copy indicated that they only wanted to see what it looked like, not that they wanted a copy for their files.
      • Some agents indicated that they did not want a copy because the docketing/processing of the Interview Record increased the cost to the client, and it is not CIPO's intent to increase the cost of the patenting process with this service.
      • Several agents mentioned (after they had chosen to have the interview record mailed to them) that it was too slow receiving it by mail (particularly when they wanted to review what was in the Interview Record before submitting a Voluntary Amendment within the agreed-upon deadline) and they preferred to retrieve it from the CPD.
      • There are internal operational efficiencies with having the record only on the CPD. Mailing the records would have a significant operational burden, requiring 3 additional task types to be created, monitored, and acted upon.
  6. Communications with the Examiner
    • CIPO has advised that email or fax may not be used to communicate directly with an examiner during the prosecution of an application. IPIC noted that a problem arises when a practitioner wants to discuss an outstanding Office Action with an Examiner and have some materials to facilitate the conversation, e.g. materials to help explain the invention and/or a claim amendment the Applicant is thinking of making. Such information is meant to enable the telephone call. IPIC suggested that this is unfair to Applicants who do not or cannot attend in-person Examiner interviews.
    • J. Pharand responded that CIPO agrees that allowing email and fax communications for this purpose would be beneficial. The Office will investigate the process changes that would be needed to implement this change and see if a proper framework can be put in place in order to enable this type of email communication.
  7. Issues with General Correspondence Interface
    • IPIC requested an estimated time-line for when the following issues related to the General Correspondence Interface might be addressed:
      • Implementation of a new transmission receipt, which combines the confirmation number with an identification of attachments and fees paid.
        • D. Boudreau responded that this is planned in the next major release (WET 4.0) of the General Correspondence form. The timelines for the WET 4.0 upgrade are currently under review, and this may have to wait until after the coming-into-force of the PLT, sometime in 2019. A workaround to meet agent needs has been put in place. As of October 3rd, the Preview provides a temporary confirmation number, along with a listing of attached documents and fees added to the submission. After successful payment, the temporary confirmation number then becomes the final confirmation number, with the payment transaction ID appended to it. Thus, the transaction receipt in combination with a copy of the preview, together provide traceability to a client of the submission, its contents, and the fees that were paid. It should be noted, if the filer previews then goes back to make changes to the application, a new preview is always generated as part of submission, so that the temporary number and final number are always matching (they are based on date/time stamp of time of final preview before submission).

          M. Paton asked if the transaction receipt would also repeat the correspondence instructions. She also noted that when there are more than 10 attachments, page truncations occur when printing. D. Boudreau noted the foregoing and responded that he would follow up on whether the receipt would contain the instructions.

    • Removal of the checkbox prior to submission, requiring the user to confirm that the information provided in the application is complete and accurate.
      • D. Boudreau noted that this was removed as of the Release of October 3rd.
    • Permitting users to pay a maintenance fee via the General Correspondence form when they have entered a serial number.
      • D. Boudreau responded that there is no technological limitation to permitting the use of the General Correspondence form for this purpose. Currently, the Office requires that MF payments be paid solely through the MF application, or as part of an e-Filing. With the upcoming changes to legislation through the PLT, this will no longer be an issue since ability to make MF payments will not be limited to specified parties.
    • Correcting the "timestamp" problem, where the transmission receipt indicates only the timestamp at the time the user first previewed their submission, and does not reflect the additional minutes (or hours) the user might have spent editing the content of the submission before finally submitting it.
      • D. Boudreau noted that this was corrected as of the Release of Oct 3rd. The date on the submission receipt is now accurate to the date and time of the submission and is no longer the date and time of the preview. Of note, the Preview page should be printed/captured by the filer before they continue to submit. Use of a web browser <back> button to go back to the Preview page after submission will result in a new Temporary Number reflecting current date and time, which will no longer match with the transmission receipt.
    • At this juncture, A. Lajoie discussed an issue with the launch of the WET 3.1 General Correspondence form (GenCorr) for Patents which took place on . The release of the Patent GenCorr contained a technological glitch that was causing some online submissions to be lost and non-retrievable. This may have affected 300 patent applications or patents.
    • The system was originally designed to delete the submission files as soon as the online payment was confirmed to the eCOM application. Due to the increasing volume on the servers, on occasion, this trigger to delete the files was done before the full transmission of the files was successfully completed. This issue was limited to submissions form General Correspondence for patents/applications that included a fee payment.
    • Since October 3rd, the system awaits successful transmission before confirming the online payment to the eCOM application, and the submission file is moved to a backup folder rather than being deleted. Therefore, if a transmission is unsuccessful, the CIO has the opportunity to manually retrieve the submission file and manually confirm the online payment to the eCOM application, which now triggers moving the submission file to a backup folder, rather than deleting.
    • The possible consequences for documents affected by the glitch vary depending on the action the client was taking with the Office and the status of the file at the time the correspondence was submitted. Affected Applicants will be contacted and letters will be tailored to address the specific issue and put the file in order.
  8. CPD Database Entry
    • Although this was previously discussed, many practitioners complain about the CAPTCHA used by CIPO for accessing the database. Particularly disliked are the numerous iterations where one has to click on vehicles or signs, which then keep reappearing. IPIC requested that CIPO consider simplifying the entry process or using a different secure means of entering the database.
    • D. Boudreau responded that the CAPTCHA is used to reduce the risk of robots mining the data and causing degradation of performance or outages to CPD and back-office systems. CIPO will work with the ISED IT Security Team to further understand the probability and impact of the risk in order to identify options for mitigating this risk with a better experience for users. A timeline cannot be committed to due to existing priorities between now and December.
  9. Certificate of Supplementary Protection (CSP)
    • IPIC noted that the Minister must maintain an electronic register of applications for CSP and certificates for CSP. It was asked whether the supplementary protection term could also be shown on CDAS or if practitioners will need to consult both databases to obtain the "real" expiry date of any medicinal patent.
    • J. Pharand responded that the supplementary protection term will not be shown on CDAS. Practitioners will need to consult both databases.
  10. Dating of Correspondence and Final Action practice with CIPO
    • Dominique Lambert (IPIC) submitted this item pertaining to a Final Action (FA) dated that was responded to on . This FA had not been received by registered mail. The Applicant received a notice of abandonment together with a copy of the FA, which had a registered mail stamp dated . An affidavit was filed by the Applicant for improper abandonment. This particular issue was resolved. However, IPIC would like an explanation of the procedure for dating correspondence, and an advisement regarding use of registered mail for sending FAs.
    • D. Boudreau responded that the Office's systems have no record of sending a copy of a FA dated for the particular patent application 2,678,497. The FA dated was scanned and stored in the Office's systems on and can be found in LOB and on CDAS. With respect to the records bearing a different date than the correspondence sent, the Office would need to know who provided the copy so that further investigation can ensue.
    • The procedure for dating correspondence is described in the Examiner's Report Process as follows:
      • Step 9. Run Print Report macroIn WORD, the clerk selects the 'National' tab and presses 'Print Report'.The Print Report macro will automatically perform the following tasks:
    • Add today's date and the letterhead to the correspondence.
    • As per an internal practice, Final Actions are only sent by Registered Mail. This is as per Examiner's Report Process:
      • Step 11. Photocopy original and "R" stamp the photocopySince the document is a Final Action, the document must be sent by registered mail.
        1. Retrieve the Final Action printout from the printer.
        2. Photocopy the Final Action and put the original aside while working with the photocopy.
        3. Stamp the first page of the photocopy with the "R" stamp to indicate that the correspondence is sent by registered mail. Do not otherwise modify the photocopy.
  11. Section 81 of the Patent Rules
    • IPIC asked CIPO to reconsider Office practice concerning documents that are accessible using a URL. J. Wilson noted that an Examiner's Report was received objecting to a reference as being a reference to a non-permanent electronic file, "and thus it does not constitute a permanently retrievable and publicly available non-patent document and should be deleted". IPIC submitted that Rule 81 does not require this level of permanence in a referenced document.
    • The relevant passages of the Patent Rules (subsections 81(2) and 81(3)) state:

      (1) The description shall not refer to a document that does not form part of the application unless the document is available to the public.

      (2) Any document referred to in the description shall be fully identified

    • J. Pharand referenced MOPOP 9.07.04 (December 2010), which deals with the interpretation of section 81 of the Patent Rules. The relevant portion states:

      "References to internet pages present a particular difficulty in that neither the URL nor the content of such pages is necessarily fixed. Examiners will object to the identification of a document by way of a URL where it is not clear that the URL refers to a reliable, publically available source that can reasonably be expected to ensure the information in question is of fixed content and will be more or less permanently retrievable.

      "Thus, there are three important aspects of a URL citation: public availability, fixed content, and permanent retrievability.

    • The Office maintains the position that examiners should raise a defect under subsection 81(3) if there is uncertainty as to which version of a document, such as a standard, is being referenced at the URL if the content is likely to be replaced. Examiner should also raise a defect under subsection 81(2) if the document is publicly retrievable at the URL at the time of examination but is unlikely to be publicly retrievable in the future (e.g. the personal web page of a graduate student).
    • It may be possible to overcome the identified defect by removing the URL and instead providing bibliographic information that identifies the document in a permanent fashion, where such information is available.
  12. PCT Applicant's Guide
    • IPIC noted that there have been amendments to the request for national phase entry consistent with the new Rule changes, and that are consistent with the repeal of section 29 of the Act eliminating the requirement to appoint a Canadian representative. CIPO has added the following paragraph to the notes in the PCT Applicant's Guide(item 4 being the appointment of a patent agent):
      • "Item 4 should be omitted if applicant resides in Canada and intends to prosecute the application without an agent".
    • IPIC indicated that the revised language should be amended to clarify that the foregoing only applies where the applicant is the inventor. IPIC also suggested that CIPO request WIPO to make a further update to avoid any potential confusion.
    • J. Pharand responded that the Office is aware of the issue with the Notes in the PCT Applicant's Guide relating to Item 4 of the Request for National Entry (RNE). CIPO is in the process of improving the language to adequately reflect the scenarios where the appointment of agent section may be removed from the RNE. Following these revisions, CIPO will request that WIPO make the changes.
  13. Transfer of PCT applications between CIPO and WIPO
    • Dominique Lambert (IPIC) had asked for CIPO's comments regarding problems with their system transferring PCT applications to WIPO.
    • D. Boudreau responded that over the past several months it had been brought to CIPO's attention that approximately 24 electronic transfers of applications to WIPO did not occur correctly or at all. The Office has identified that some of the failures were due to manually initiated transfers having been done incorrectly by the Office. It was also identified that on two days, and , the electronic transfers did not occur. All of these transfers have since been corrected. CIPO is establishing a manual QC procedure to ensure any future failures are identified and corrected in a timely manner.

5 Roundtable

  • D. Boudreau advised that there will be a new release of the CPD in early 2018. There will be 4 modifications: 1) ability to perform keyword searches of disclosures; 2) ability to search full ownership information under the Owners of Record dropdown list; 3) display of the forecasted issue date under the Admin Status screen; and 4)provision of additional information about Commissioner's Decisions. Later in 2018, there will be another release, where it is intended that suspension statuses of applications will be made available.
  • A. Lajoie noted that when she attended the IPIC roundtable, she shared documents relating to Patent Branch stats and facts as well as a document for IPIC's input, which contained information about what is new at the Branch. She also noted that the Office is presently recruiting patent examiners. At this time, mechanical and electrical examiners are being recruited.

6. Next meeting and closing remarks

  • The next 2PC meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday, at 1PM, at Place du Portage, Phase 1, room 24-G.
  • IPIC plans to have a list of proposed topics sent to CIPO by .

The meeting adjourned at 3:03 PM.