On January 17, 2020, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office amended the Practice Notice relating to extensions of time in examination to provide an update that the Office will no longer grant an extension of time to respond to an examination report unless the applicant is able to demonstrate exceptional circumstances that would justify granting an extension. This is a reversal of previous Office practice, where applicants were able to request one six month extension of time to file a complete response to any examination report, and exceptional circumstances were required only when seeking additional extensions of time.

Examples of exceptional circumstances that the Office will accept as justification for granting additional extensions of time include cases where there is a pending cancellation action or opposition against a cited application or registration, a recent change in agent, or a pending assignment which has been filed but not recorded. These exceptional circumstances can be used as justification to obtain many extensions of time, for example including the duration of an opposition against a cited application.

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office has also expanded the list of exceptional circumstances to include an application that has received an objection based on distinctiveness, confusion, descriptiveness, and some other very serious objections. These new exceptional circumstances will only be permitted to be used to obtain one single extension of time over the life of the application. For this reason, applicants will want to be prudent in choosing when to use their one extension of time to ensure that they have ample time to file a proper response where it may be necessary to file significant affidavit evidence demonstrating the acquired distinctiveness of the trademark throughout Canada.

These new guidelines are in force now, however, the old rules will continue to apply for applicants responding to examination reports issued prior to January 17, 2020.