Update: Bill C-47 received royal assent on June 22, 2023. The Bill’s provisions amending the Patent Act to implement patent term adjustment were not amended from the initial proposed legislation, and are scheduled to come into force no later than January 1, 2025.  

Bill C-47, “An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023,” aka “Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1” is an omnibus bill that includes proposed amendments to the Patent Act to introduce patent term adjustment (PTA) to compensate the patentee for Patent Office delays in granting a patent. Our article, “A first look at Canada’s proposed patent term adjustment system,” discusses the proposed legislation, which is currently before the Standing Committee on Finance. If passed, the PTA provisions would apply to Canadian patent applications filed on or after December 1, 2020.

As explained in the article, and of particular interest to readers of Rx IP Update, Bill C-47 proposes that the term for a certificate of supplementary protection (CSP)—granted on a Canadian patent to account for delay in the regulatory approval process for medicines—would run concurrently with the term for the PTA, rather than starting at the end of the PTA term.

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