De la prétendue interprétation téléologique des revendications de brevet: remarques sur les arrêts Whirlpool et Free World Trust

Abstract

The author comments two cases, Whirlpool and Free World Trust, where the Supreme Court of Canada adopted the purposive construction of patent claims, which suppresses the purely textual interpretation, strengthening however the interpretation regarding the essence and substance of an invention. The author criticizes the Court's solution, indicating that the use of more rigorous rules of construction or the formulation of more detailed principles or methods of construction cannot reduce the legal uncertainty associated with the construction of such claims. Ideally, the solution would have been to determine the author's intent, based on the meaning of the words, the context in which the words were used and the object or purpose of the text under scrutiny. The aim is neither to reject nor to prefer a method, but rather to use all appropriate methods to interpret a text in a just and reasonable manner, given the particular circumstances of a case.