Clock Winds Down on Deadline to Make Small Entity "Top-Up" Fee Payments to CIPO

When the small entity remedial provisions of Bill C-29 came into force on February 1, 2006, patent owners were given 12 months from that date to make any top-up payments to remedy underpaid fees (including payments mistakenly paid at a small entity rate). As previously reported in E-TIPS® (Vol 4, No 11, November 23, 2005), case law in Canada had established that it was impossible to make such top-up payments in the ordinary course and the government was forced to enact a special regime to allow patent owners to secure their patent protection. The corrective fee payments must be received by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) by February 1, 2007, in order to be accepted. Additional information on Bill C-29 is available on the CIPO web site at: http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/sc_mrksv/cipo/patents/c-29_intro-e.html Summary by: Clare McCurley