Problem
Ricky Yamagishi is a manufacturing process engineer by trade. He and his family had just lived through the coronavirus pandemic in Canada, and now that the health situation was under control Ricky turned his thoughts to a problem that had arisen during the emergency; that of a shortage of ventilators. Now the mechanics of ventilators is fairly basic (infusion of oxygen into the lungs, extraction of Co2 from the lungs) but these machines, using current manufacturing processes take a period of 2 to 3 weeks to manufacture. In other words, countries could not rapidly scale up the production of these machines if they had to, and that had been a major cause of concern in the recent health crisis.
To address this issue the University of McGill had run a global competition for new designs of ventilators in March of 2020 and in May of 2020 and the top three winners had been announced. Now McGill retained the intellectual ownership of the designs, which they had chosen to make freely available to anyone to manufacture.
Having reviewed the three designs, Ricky is sure because of his work background, that he could design a manufacturing process that would allow these designs to be manufactured in a simple, efficient, and effective manner, and which did not require sophisticated manufacturing ability. Hence the technique could be used in any country (developed or not as advanced) to scale quickly the manufacture of such machines if ever needed again.
What Ricky is interested in finding out is what is the international framework for patent protection on manufacturing processes. He is thinking of talking to a patent lawyer about this but has asked you to do some preliminary research on the subject so that he is better prepared to talk to a such a lawyer if he chooses to.
His specific questions are:
1. How does one go about getting a Patent in the US and Canada?
2. What regulatory or international organizations are involved in the management of patents internationally?
3. Is there anything unique in getting a patent on a manufacturing process as opposed to other categories of intellectual property?
4. And your general opinion as to whether or not it is worth while to get a patent on such a process?
5. What advice would you give to your client as to how to approach the patent lawyer?
Initial sources that can be used are Statista (search for patents), World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO), and the United States Patent and Trade Mark Office.