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On May 5, 2026, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) issued a preliminary redetermination on the remand of Dusome v. Canada (Attorney General), 2025 FC 1809 (“Dusome“).
In Dusome, the Federal Court had set aside CIPO’s refusal of a patent application for a method of playing poker with physical cards and for a computerized implementation of the game and remitted the application to CIPO for redetermination. CIPO subsequently released a new Practice Notice in response to the decision, eliminating the “actual invention” analytical step, removing the prohibition on patenting games, and reaffirming the physicality requirement for computer-implemented inventions.
After applying the new patentable subject matter framework, CIPO has preliminarily determined that the claims in the application remain directed to non-patentable subject matter. CIPO found that the method claims were directed to the rules of a poker game implemented using standard playing cards, which were well-known tools and did not contribute the required physicality. CIPO also found that the computerized implementation claims were directed to an algorithm executed on generic computer components operating in a well-known manner, with no disclosed improvement to the functioning of the computer itself. As a result, CIPO concluded that neither the method claims nor the computerized implementation claims satisfied the physicality requirement. The claims were therefore still found to be directed to non-patentable subject matter. As this was a preliminary determination, the Applicant still has the opportunity to provide further submissions to CIPO.
The Dusome redetermination is a reminder that CIPO’s doctrinal refinements do not always translate into different results in practice. For inventors in the gaming, software, and AI spaces, patentability in Canada may still require either additional physical elements or a demonstrable improvement in computer functionality.
Access the Dusome redetermination decision here and CIPO’s new Practice Notice here.
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