Patent Act

Marginal note:Commissioner may grant patents

• 27 (1) The Commissioner shall grant a patent for an invention to the inventor or the inventor’s legal representative if an application for the patent in Canada is filed in accordance with this Act and all other requirements for the issuance of a patent under this Act are met.

• Marginal note:Application requirements

  (2) The prescribed application fee must be paid and the application must be filed in accordance with the regulations by the inventor or the inventor’s legal representative and the application must contain a petition and a specification of the invention.

• Marginal note:Specification

  (3) The specification of an invention must

  • (a) correctly and fully describe the invention and its operation or use as contemplated by the inventor;

  • (b) set out clearly the various steps in a process, or the method of constructing, making, compounding or using a machine, manufacture or composition of matter, in such full, clear, concise and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art or science to which it pertains, or with which it is most closely connected, to make, construct, compound or use it;

  • (c) in the case of a machine, explain the principle of the machine and the best mode in which the inventor has contemplated the application of that principle; and

  • (d) in the case of a process, explain the necessary sequence, if any, of the various steps, so as to distinguish the invention from other inventions.

• Marginal note:Claims

  (4) The specification must end with a claim or claims defining distinctly and in explicit terms the subject-matter of the invention for which an exclusive privilege or property is claimed.

• Marginal note:Alternative definition of subject-matter

  (5) For greater certainty, where a claim defines the subject-matter of an invention in the alternative, each alternative is a separate claim for the purposes of sections 2, 28.1 to 28.3 and 78.3.

• Marginal note:When application to be completed

  (6) Where an application does not completely meet the requirements of subsection (2) on its filing date, the Commissioner shall, by notice to the applicant, require the application to be completed on or before the date specified in the notice.

• Marginal note:Specified period

  (7) The specified date must be at least three months after the date of the notice and at least twelve months after the filing date of the application.

• Marginal note:What may not be patented

  (8) No patent shall be granted for any mere scientific principle or abstract theorem.