The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (“CIPO”) has published amended Practice Notices and a Guidance document on Nice Classification, Divisional Applications and Temporary Appointment of Trademark Agents. Issued January 17, 2020, these changes have immediate effect and have material implications for prosecuting trademark applications at CIPO.
Read more in this Knowledge Bytes article.
The Canadian Intellectual Property Office will be taking its efiling systems for trademarks down from Thursday, June 13, 2019, at 00:00 EDT to Monday, June 17, 2019, at 06:00 EDT, for system upgrades and enhancements.
How does this affect Applicants and owners of trademark Registrations in Canada? Among other things, this outage will affect:
• e-Filing of new Trademark Applications;
• Registration of pending Applications; and
• Renewal of existing Registrations
Long awaited and significant changes to Canadian Trademark law – many of which have been previously discussed in this Blog – don’t come into force until June 17, 2019 (the CIF Date). However, with the above systems outage, anyone hoping to file a new application or to renew an existing registration – with the intent of doing so under the current, lower pricing that is not tied to the number of Nice classes of goods/services covered – will need to do so prior to midnight (EDT) on June 12, 2019. The same time limit applies to anyone hoping to finalize registration of an allowed application with the intent of obtaining a 15 year term, rather than the 10 year term available for registrations that issue after the CIF Date.
Please contact the author for more information or advice on the above.