Although only a small percentage of requests for leave are granted by the Supreme Court of Canada, legal observers say that the court is likely to take this case up--especially because Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin has suggested that the court would like to consider biotechnology issues.
"It's almost certain," said Margaret Somerville, a law professor at McGill University who follows the Canadian courts.
Important in Canada
At issue is the heart of the patent code: the definition of the word "invention" itself.
The Court of Appeals ruling took a sweeping view of inventions that describes both animate and inanimate objects as "compositions of matter" that can be patented.
Justice Marshall Rothstein wrote that "nothing in the term 'composition of matter' suggests that living things are excluded from the definition" of invention.
The Canadian Justice Department disagrees with this interpretation.
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