Canadian Patent Law/Patentable matter

The basic requirement for something to be patentable is that it is new, useful, and inventive. The rationale behind this is that the protection of the invention should benefit all of society by encouraging those who design them to profit and continue to create more. Classic mechanical, chemical, electrical inventions follow a typically strict form of evaluation that has proven to be practicable. However, with the expansion of the sciences, new unforeseen territory is being examined for whether the public interest in protecting inventions may be outweighed by other more detrimental factors, ethical or otherwise.