The New Zealand government is now looking to accelerate the extinction of these dinosaurs. It has published draft legislation that will amend the transitional provisions of the 2013 Act such that any further divisional applications, filed more than three months after commencement of the amendments, will effectively be subject to many of the elevated standards of the current act, rather than the lower standards that applied under the old act. The idea seems to be that such applications would either be invalid (if they fail to meet the higher standards required under the current law) or could be granted as patents only to the extent that they substantially satisfy the same requirements that would apply had the originating application been filed on or after 13 September 2014.
On 18 March 2025 the New Zealand government published a notice seeking feedback on the draft legislation. Any submissions are due no later than 5pm (New Zealand time, which is earlier in the day almost everywhere else in the world) on 1 April 2025. That does not allow much time to review and respond to the draft! It should, however, be noted that the scope of the consultation is very narrow. The government is not interested in hearing from anyone who disagrees with the policy or legislative intent (which was supposedly addressed in an earlier consultation) – the sole subject of feedback being sought is ‘whether the drafting of the Bill achieves the policy intent or could have unintended consequences.’
When I saw the notice, I was curious about the extent of the impact this proposed legislation would have on applicants and the New Zealand patent system generally. I wondered how may applications would be implicated after all these years, and whether there are particular applicants that have been ‘exploiting’ the transition provisions more than others (spoiler alert: it turns out that there are). So that is what this article is mostly about.
