We are now at the six month anniversary of the coming into force of Canada’s new trademark law, and it is therefore useful to examine how the Canadian Intellectual Property Office has coped with those changes in the first six months since the law was introduced on June 17, 2019.

It will take some time to be able to assess the changes which have been made to examination, such as through the introduction of the new inherent distinctiveness objections, or the effects of the changes brought about in opposition and Section 45 procedures.

What is clear from an examination of filing and registration statistics is that the past six months have been extremely busy for the Office. Because of the removal of the requirement to file a Declaration of Use, the number of trademark registrations which issued in 2019 saw a marked increase. For example, in 2018, just under 25,000 applications issued to registration. In 2019, about 15,000 registrations issued from January 1 to June 17, 2019. But from June 17, 2019 to date, just over 40,000 applications have issued to registration, for a total of 55,000 registrations issued during the calendar year 2019.

For the six months leading up to June 17, 2019, there were 34,228 applications filed, and since June 17th, an additional 28,500 new trademark applications have been filed. Of this total, just over 5,000 of these new trademark applications were filed using the new Madrid Protocol system. For comparison purposes, in 2018, about 63,000 trademark applications were filed, and so the total number of applications filed remained roughly constant.

When the new law came into force in June 2019, the average time from filing to the issuance of a first examination report was 16 months. Since June, that time has expanded to the current average of 19 months from the date of filing through to the issuance of the first correspondence.