Blacklock's Reporter

A multi-million dollar plan to modernize the federal patent office ran two years late and went 114 percent over budget, the Department of Industry disclosed yesterday. Figures detailed at the request of Conservative MP Arnold Viersen (Peace River-Westlock, Alta.) showed patent holders still waited nearly four years on average for documents to be approved even after managers spent millions to computerize the system: “Do we have a marketplace that allows our inventors to first showcase their products to the world? We do not.”