Changes to Canadian Trademark Examination Process
Following up on an earlier post, the Canadian Trade-marks Office has announced changes to the examination of trademark applications.
Effective June 17, 2009 the time allowed to respond to Examiner's Report is now six (6) months (from the previous four months). Notably, however, this change will not impact deadlines imposed prior to June 17, 2009 (i.e. for Examiner's Reports issued prior to that date) and thus it will be important to carefully diarize any outstanding deadlines to reflect this change.
Additionally, the Trade-marks Office has announced that it will no longer issue "courtesy letters" to applicants to advise regarding co-pending and potentially confusing applications with a later filing date.
You may also recall that the Trade-marks Office was soliciting input regarding a third policy, namely a proposal to no longer impose a deadline for a Requesting Party to respond to correspondence relating to Changes in Title. At this time there has been no formal announcement concerning the introduction of this policy.
In addition to changes noted above, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office has commenced a consultation period expiring September 14, 2009 to consider enabling clients (for patents, trademarks, industrial design, copyright and integrated circuit topography applications) to file correspondence and obtain filing dates on Saturdays, Sunday and holidays - while still maintaining the current time extensions for deadlines. To applicants filing submissions or applications on those days formerly known as a day off this may represent a positive development to provide an earlier filing date than that which is currently available. Nevertheless, to others this may simply represent a further worrisome encroachment on an employee's family or free time in a manner continuing along the trend of 24/7 accessibility in the age of handheld email devices.
