SCC Clarifies Areas of Challenge for Selection Patents

It has become common practice the chemical, biotechnology, and drug industries to file for a patent (the “genus�? patent) when the inventors have a discernible group of materials and compounds that can do “something,�? and which satisfies the requirements for utility, novelty and unobviousness, and then to continue working on those compounds in order to tease out best candidates with specific properties. In Apotex Inc. v. Sanofi-Synthelabo Canada Inc., [2008] S.C.J. No. 63, the innovator company Sanofi had obtained a genus patent covering a large group of compounds on the basis of years of work and sound prediction.