Trademark applicants should be aware that examination timelines for trademarks have decreased significantly.
Anyone who has applied for trademark protection in Canada in recent years knows that the examination wait times for trademark applications have been long. Until recently, trademark applicants could wait for three years or more before their trademark application would be examined. In this regard, please see our earlier article on this topic: https://patentable.com/cipo-updates-its-trademarks-service-standards/
Recently, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) has significantly reduced examination wait times and now estimates that processing times for new trademark applications will soon be approximately nine months.
As a consequence of the reduced examination times, CIPO recently announced that accelerated examination will no longer be offered to trademark applications using pre-approved goods and services from CIPO's Goods and Services Manual (the "Manual").
Although there will soon no longer be any accelerated examination incentive for using terms from the Manual, applicants seeking to minimize goods and services objections to their trademark applications may still find it valuable to do so. Using the Manual's pre-approved terms can help reduce the likelihood of such objections, as these terms are already considered by CIPO to be in ordinary commercial and specific terms.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
