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In Canada, like the USA, exclusions to patentable subject matter are driven primarily by the courts. Two recent decisions by the Canadian Patent Appeal Board (one on patentability of business methods and the other on the patentability of methods of medical treatment) have highlighted the inherent difficulty of crafting exclusions to patentable subject matter grounded not on legislative intent but on judicial activism.Courts, patent examiners, and the patent appeal board should be slow to deny patents where their subject matter is considered ineligible; rather patent applications should be assessed by the traditional criteria of patentability (namely, novelty, inventiveness, and utility). If the subject matter can be made to fit within the definition of ‘invention’ (even if slightly uncomfortably), the courts should aim to ‘breathe life’ into the bare, sometimes dated, words of the patent statute. Since the patent statutes are drafted with a view to the unforeseen, any judicial interpretation of the word ‘invention’ must give deference to this vision. A theory of subject-matter eligibility is also proposed.

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Melnychuk, S. (2013). Drug Dosage Regimes and Patent-Eligible Subject Matter in Canada. Canadian Intellectual Property Review, 29, 297.

Cornish, W. R. (with Llewelyn, D., & Aplin, T. F.). (2013). Intellectual property: patents, copyright, trade marks and allied rights (Eighth Edition.). Sweet & Maxwell.

Bourassa Forcier, M. (with Audet, W., & Melançon, G.). (2020). Précis de propriété intellectuelle. Les Éditions Revue de Droit, Université de Sherbrooke.

"Ce Précis se veut être un recueil de notes pour les étudiants inscrits dans un cours de propriété intellectuelle. Nous avons souhaité y intégrer l'essentiel plutôt que de nous attarder aux nombreux aspects et particularités de ce domaine du droit si fascinant. Cette construction vise à forcer les étudiants à pousser leurs réflexions, par exemple, en lien avec le sujet de l'intelligence artificielle, un des sujets que nous avons volontairement omis du Précis. Pour cette première édition, le droit d'auteur, les marques de commerce et les brevets sont abordés. Le sujet des dessins industriels fera l'objet d'une prochaine édition." --Préface.

Mitnovetski, O., & Nicol, D. (2004). Are patents for methods of medical treatment contrary to the ordre public and morality or “generally inconvenient”? Journal of Medical Ethics, 30(5), 470–475. https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.2002.000786

“No one has advanced a just and logical reason why reward for service to the public should be extended to the inventor of a mechanical toy and denied to the genius whose patience, foresight, and effort have given a valuable new [discovery] to mankind” (Katopis CJ. Patents v patents: policy implications of recent patent legislation. St John’s Law Review 1997;71:329). The law around the world permits the granting of patents for drugs, medical devices, and cosmetic treatment of the human body. At the same time, patentability for a method of treatment of the same body is denied in some countries on various public policy grounds. Is there any logical justification for this distinction? Are methods of medical treatment not as vital to the health or even to the life of a patient as drugs or medical devices? Why is a cosmetic result patentable and a curative result not?

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Piper, T. (2010). A Common Law Prescription for a Medical Malaise. In C. W.-M. Ng, L. Bently, & G. D’Agostino (Eds.), The common law of intellectual property: essays in honour of Professor David Vaver (p. 143). Hart Publishing.

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