Submitted by inclawyers on Fri, 05/02/2010 - 10:00am
Canada will be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern trademark world. In December 2009, CIPO issued a request for comments that would see amendments made to the Trade-marks Act to better align the Canadian system with the trademark systems used by major and minor countries.
Comments will be received until March 15, 2010, by fax or e-mail to the person specified in the request.
Submitted by inclawyers on Thu, 04/02/2010 - 10:00am
CIPO has issued a request for comments about a proposed practice notice dealing with professional designations and their initials. In Canada, professional designations include, for example, designations for the accounting profession: CGA, CA, and CMA; the medical profession, and professional engineers.
The thrust of the proposed practice note is that if, as a matter of first impression:
Submitted by inclawyers on Tue, 12/01/2010 - 10:00am
Before adopting a trademark, it’s wise to carry out various kinds of searches on that mark. You’re trying to find out, as best as you can, whether someone else has already adopted the mark for their business.
However, all too often, calls come in where the process has been reversed: the trademark owner has chosen their mark and finalized all their domain registrations and possibly even their corporation name, and it’s only at that point that they turn their mind to finding out whether their chosen mark is in fact available as a trademark.
Submitted by inclawyers on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 10:00am
What’s a realistic budget for registering a trademark in Canada? As in most things legal, the fully correct answer is the one hardest for a client to hear: it depends. Each client’s needs are different, and one can never know what will happen when any particular trademark application is filed.