Canada Trademark Registration Process Overview
You apply to CIPO (the Canadian Intellectual Property Office) for registration of your trademark. It takes about 14-18 months between application and registration for a typical trademark. These are the normal stages:
- Stage 1: Awaiting First Response From CIPO – After CIPO receives your application, it takes them about 8-12 months to do a review and get back to you with any objections.
- Stage 2: Examiner’s Report – If there are objections they usually involve descriptions of the wares and services, confusion with existing marks on the registry or descriptiveness. In our experience, CIPO raises an objection about 50% of the time. Our success rate in overcoming objections is over 95%. If there is an objection, it can take from 1-12 months to resolve.
- Stage 3: Publication and Opposition – Your mark is then published in the weekly Trademark Journal, which lists all the trademarks CIPO believes qualify for registration. The public then has 2 months to object. This rarely happens. If someone does object, they must file a Statement of Opposition, which begins the Opposition Process. Even if there is no Opposition, this stage still takes about 6 months. If there is, it can take years to resolve.
- Stage 4: Registration – You’ll get a Notice of Allowance from CIPO saying they’re ready to register your trademark once you’ve filed the final papers and paid them the necessary fee. This can be done in as little as 1 month.