Who can apply for a patent?
An applicant for a patent can be the inventor or his assignee, namely someone to whom the inventor has assigned his rights, or the inventor and assignee as joint applicants. If a dispute arises as to who is entitled to obtain a particular patent, the Commissioner of Patents will be the adjudicator called upon to decide this.
Read section 28 of the Patents Act.
You can prepare the documentation for a patent application yourself. All the forms required by the Patent Regulations are available from the CIPC website. However, unless you really know what you are doing, it would be a mistake to do so. Rather engage the services of a patent attorney — there is a lot of truth and wisdom in the notion that cheap can sometimes be expensive. Moreover, the complete specification — which we discuss next — must be signed by a patent attorney, who may be reluctant to do so if the specification has been prepared by a lay person.