Intellectual Property
-
October 10, 2025
SCC clarifies when Quebec 10-year ‘extinctive prescription’ period reboots for collecting on judgments
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled 9-0 in a Quebec appeal that filing and serving a notice to seize property counts as a judicial application interrupting the 10-year deadline to collect payment on a judgment — thereby restarting for a further 10 years the “extinctive prescription” period (comparable to a limitation period in the common law provinces) that applies to rights resulting from most money judgments under art. 2924 of the Civil Code of Québec.
-
October 08, 2025
Fraser calls provinces’ demand to scrap Ottawa’s SCC arguments on notwithstanding clause ‘untenable’
Attorney General of Canada Sean Fraser has pushed back against the demands of five premiers that Ottawa should drop its novel arguments at the Supreme Court that there are substantive constraints on governments’ powers to invoke the Charter’s s. 33 “notwithstanding” clause — arguments that those five provinces contend “represent a complete disavowal of the constitutional bargain that brought the Charter into being” in 1982.
-
October 08, 2025
R. v. Chand: A cautionary tale of generative AI and judicial intervention
This is the third article in a series building on my earlier discussion of AI hallucinations in the legal context and their prevalence.
-
October 07, 2025
Attorney General Sean Fraser tells SCC the law needs to protect people with ‘no voice’
There was a celebratory mood at the opening ceremony for the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2025-26 court year, but Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Sean Fraser and other legal leaders delivered a sober message to the Ottawa courtroom packed with lawyers and judges.
-
October 07, 2025
Prevalence of AI hallucinations in the legal context
When it comes to legal research and the use of generative AI, the amount of false information being generated is alarming. However, the data varies depending on the study, the AI tools analyzed and how AI hallucinations manifest.
-
October 07, 2025
Lawyer ordered to pay costs for non-disclosure of gen AI use and citing fake precedents in court
In a cautionary case for litigation lawyers who use generative artificial intelligence (AI) for court submissions, a Federal Court associate judge recently hit an immigration lawyer with personal costs for submitting two defective AI-generated precedents and for breaching the Federal Court’s requirement to disclose any generative AI use in court filings.
-
October 06, 2025
Supreme Court to clarify patentability of methods of medical treatment
After over a decade, the Supreme Court of Canada will hear a pharmaceutical patent case: Pharmascience Inc. v. Janssen Inc., et al. The case concerns the patentability of methods of medical treatment, an area of law that the courts have been grappling with for many years. The Supreme Court is set to determine whether dosing regimens fall within the statutory definition of “invention” of the Patent Act or remain unpatentable subject matter.
-
October 03, 2025
G7 summit discusses competition issues related to algorithmic pricing
Canada hosted the G7 Competition Authorities and Policymakers’ Summit in Ottawa, which concluded Oct. 2, with discussions on digital competition, with a particular focus on algorithmic pricing and its impacts on competition, markets and the economy.
-
October 03, 2025
Canadian Intellectual Property Office rules AI cannot be inventor: The DABUS decision
On June 5, 2025, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office’s commissioner of patents ruled that Stephen Thaler’s Canadian patent application No. 3,137,161 was refused. The application, which is titled “Food Container and Devices and Methods for Attracting Enhanced Attention,” listed as its inventor DABUS (Device for Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience), an artificial intelligence model created by Thaler.
-
October 02, 2025
Line crossed: IRCC’s proposed administrative monetary penalties should alarm all Canadian bars
The federal government is quietly implementing a regulatory framework that should alarm every lawyer in Canada, regardless of practice area. Under the guise of addressing immigration “ghost consultants,” Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has crafted administrative monetary penalties (AMPs) that grant it unprecedented authority to discipline lawyers — the same lawyers who routinely challenge that department’s decisions in court.