Welcome to Cases That Should Have Gone to the Supreme Court of Canada, But Didn’t! This week, lawyer Kyla Lee discusses patent validity and what constitutes ‘obviousness’ in patents.
Acumen Law Corporation lawyer Kyla Lee gives her take on a made-in-Canada court case each week and discusses why these cases should have been heard by Canada’s highest court: the Supreme Court of Canada.
Packers Plus filed for a series of patents in relation to a technology in the oil and gas industry that was used to deliver fluid to various types of holes. This technology that it used had previously been used in a certain type of hole, but not in others. Packers Plus claimed to have developed a method that allowed it to be used in the second type of hole and filed for a patent on that basis. Their patents were challenged and overturned on the basis of ‘obviousness’.
Essentially, a design cannot be patented if the design itself would have been so obvious that anybody could have come up with it. Packers Plus argued that they had come up with this design in a way that nobody else had ever used before and that even though it was obvious after the fact, it wasn’t obvious to anybody at the time they came up with the design and so, therefore, it was deserving of patent protection.
The court disagreed and this case raises important issues of what constitutes obviousness in patents?
Watch the video for more.